Here’s a statistic shared by Search Optics chief relationship officer Christian Fuller that may shed some light on how important your dealership’s mobile website, and the design of that website, can be.  

“What we find is that your conversion-to-lead on a mobile device, the ability to take a visitor that comes in from a mobile environment and actually hits call or submits an email is significantly higher than for a PC,” Fuller said in a February phone interview with Auto Remarketing. “In some metros, currently we’re seeing more than 50 percent of the users coming in from mobile devices. There are even some that are over 60 percent.”

That mobile customer often tends to be in the lowest funnel of the car-shopping process, so when you have a mobile-first marketing strategy, “you’re really driving that person who is the most likely to make an action,” he added.

“In the mobile environment, if you’re focused on the experience in mobile and then backing into the larger PC screen environment, it allows an even better experience over there, because if you’ve got the mobile nailed, the PC just becomes a richer experience of it,” he said.

Fuller was adding some additional context to one of the automotive digital marketing predictions for 2015 that Search Optics made in January — the company suggested that responsive design of dealer websites will become even more important, given the increase in tablet and smartphone usage — but the statistics he shared tie into much of what others are noting about the prevalence of mobile.

The 2015 Automotive Buyer Influence study from AutoTrader.com, for example, shared some mobile trends showing that 39 percent of car shoppers reports using a smartphone, compared to a mere 19 percent in 2013.

And these shoppers aren’t putting their phones down when they enter a physical in store. In fact, 65 percent of shoppers used the device while visiting a dealership.

For tablets, the numbers are slightly lower; 35 percent reported using a tablet in the 2015 study, compared to 19 percent in 2013.

AutoTrader explained the mobile device usage growth is being led by used-car buyers, who showed the largest increases in using smartphone and tablets for car shopping last year.

“The power and proliferation of mobile devices in the U.S. is undeniable, and consumers are rapidly turning to these devices as they shop for cars,” said Jared Rowe, president of AutoTrader.com. “The importance for all automotive advertisers to have a robust cross-platform presence cannot be underscored enough if they want to reach and influence consumers as they shop for cars.”

And it seems these new more convenient devices are pulling shoppers away from their desktops and laptops. In 2013, 91 percent of car buyers who used the Internet to shop for cars reported using a desktop/laptop, compared to 82 percent in the 2015 study.

That’s not to say, however, that buyers have abandoned PC usage.

“Mobile will continue to be an important element in the future of car shopping, as it enables buyers to get the information they need whenever and wherever they need it,” added Rowe. “But rather than just thinking with a mobile mindset, automotive advertisers need to ensure that they are developing specific experiences across the spectrum of devices consumers use to shop for cars so they can deliver the right information at the right time.”

Speaking of mobile device usage and auto advertising, here’s an interesting tidbit related to what’s perhaps the biggest celebration of marketing (and football) of them all – the Super Bowl.

Dataium released its annual Big Game Automotive Report late last month and found that, as expected for most any Super Bowl Sunday, overall dealership website shopper traffic dipped that day.

But the firm offered this nugget: mobile device usage was up from a year ago, which possibly helped curb total traffic declines.

“Aggregate traffic was down 12.5 percent over a typical Sunday night, but this compares favorably to last year’s 14.7 percent decrease,” Dataium said in the analysis. “This effect may be due to the higher use of mobile devices (56.4 percent) during this year’s game as compared to 2014’s (41.8 percent).”

All told, the company said Super Bowl advertising netted a positive for automakers and their dealer. Dataium has been doing the Super Bowl study for four years, but this marked the first where “all automotive ads saw positive short-term lifts in dealership website traffic across all participating brands,” the company noted.

Deanna Smith, an analyst with Dataium added:  “With advertisers applying advanced analytics, consumer response to commercials has been increasing. Combining this fact, with increases in mobile device use, more real auto shoppers were able to ‘seek and surf’ without leaving the comfort of their seat, making the combination of technology and analytics a super big win for advertisers.”