J.D. Power released the results of its recent report on customer reactions to their interactions with automotive mobile sites on Thursday. The J.D. Power 2014 Automotive Mobile Site Study found that smartphone users are more likely to share vehicle information on social media when they are satisfied with the experience they had on either a manufacturer’s or third-party’s automotive website.

In its third year, the study was redesigned to collect details on content and tool usage while measuring which content was the most effective during the vehicle-shopping process. Website usefulness was measured in four ways: information/content, navigation, appearance and speed, while calculating satisfaction on a 1,000-point scale.

While it’s probably not surprising that customers tend to share on social media their most positive experiences, several key findings were derived from the most recent iteration of the ongoing study, according to J.D Power. The company listed them as follows: 

• Shoppers who share vehicle information on social media are more likely to share imagery, such as exterior images (48 percent), interior images (42 percent) and videos (40 percent) than other less visual content, such as payment/lease (18 percent) or dealer information (25 percent).
• Use of videos, interior 360-degree and exterior 360-degree tools has a significant positive impact on satisfaction among smartphone shoppers when researching how a vehicle looks on both OEM and third-party websites.
• When researching vehicle information shoppers who access an OEM website on a smartphone are much more likely to use a build and price tool (43 percent) than those who shop on third-party sites (30 percent). However, vehicle shoppers accessing a third-party website on a smartphone are more likely to use an inventory search tool (36 percent) than those on an OEM site (32 percent).
• The largest gap (90 points) in satisfaction between OEM (806) and third-party sites (716) is in appearance of the website.

“When vehicle shoppers have a positive experience on an OEM or third-party site, they are more likely to share the content they find useful or interesting with others,” said Arianne Walker, J.D. Power’s senior director of automotive media and marketing. “This provides auto brands a great opportunity to get their content out in front of consumers through social media. The challenge is not only having great content to encourage sharing, but also ensuring that consumers have an outstanding experience no matter what site they are accessing on their smartphone.”

The report also outlined several manufacturer websites that customer responses said they had the best experience viewing. Topping the list was Acura with a score of 811, followed closely by Cadillac (803), Porsche (802) and Chrysler (801).