Sharon Knitter is responsible for the strategic management and development of Cars.com’s consumer automotive buying and selling channels on the Web. In addition, Knitter has led the site’s mobile initiatives, working to bring the best of Cars.com to shoppers on the go. She spoke with eMarketer’s Noah Elkin about Cars.com’s mobile initiatives and the importance of aligning mobile strategy with identifiable user behavior and needs.
eMarketer: What are you doing with mobile?
“Our goal was that all of our consumers be able to access our content in a mobile environment, no matter what kind of device they have.”
Sharon Knitter: We have two mobile offerings with more on the way. First, we have our mobile Website, which we launched in 2007. It’s optimized for everything from touchscreens down to feature phones. Our goal, and the most important thing for us, was that all of our consumers be able to access our content in a mobile environment, no matter what kind of device they have.
As our next initiative, we created an iPhone app, which has been extremely successful. Even though prior to launching the app we had quite a bit of traffic from to the mobile Website from iPhone users, with the creation of the app we’ve seen very high levels of traffic and page views in the iPhone app. It’s so successful in fact that we’re going to be tweaking and re-launching another version probably in the next two or three months.
eMarketer: Can you outline the decisions that went into choosing the iPhone platform first? Was that just a factor of the percentage of traffic that came from iPhone users?
Knitter: Absolutely. It was all about market share. When you think about the iPhone, it was really the first sort of important application platform. That said, the other important thing there is the distribution aspect. In order to be in front of all the folks who are looking for apps, you need to be in the App Store.
eMarketer: Does the app offer additional functionality that’s not available on the mobile site?
Knitter: Yes. We wanted to use the native functionality of the phone. So you can save to your favorites and other things that are very iPhone-oriented.
“Taking our Website and dumping it into a mobile environment isn’t very helpful.”
I should say that we also think pretty carefully, with both the mobile Website and the app, about what from the Website goes into our mobile offerings. A lot of us come from a newspaper background and we learned from that. Taking the newspaper and putting the entire thing onto the Web was not a Website. Taking our Website and dumping it into a mobile environment isn’t very helpful either. So we do actually think pretty significantly about what types of information is important, and we only include that information. But we’ve found from the consumer research we’ve done that we’re hitting on the right amount of content.
eMarketer: Can you give an example of some type of content that is on the full desktop Website but not on the mobile site or vice versa?
Knitter: On the Website we’ll do very, very lengthy reviews about all the specs and type of information about a new vehicle. An automobile is still a pretty considered purchase, and we don’t believe that people will do all of their research in a mobile environment today, on a phone especially. So we might not include the very long reviews, but we might include a truncated review for someone to be able to get essential information.
We know from our research that about 40% of the folks who use the mobile Website are actually on a dealer’s lot. And what are the types of things they want in that situation? They want to be able to search listings for other cars, they probably want a dealer locator, they might want to know how much their car is worth as a trade-in, so it’s very tools- and functionality-based with some reviews of at a higher level.
eMarketer: Do you plan to expand the app to other platforms?
Knitter: Absolutely. Android will most likely be our next version, and then we’re talking about BlackBerry and the iPad. We get some traffic already from iPad users, but it tends to go to our regular Website as opposed to the mobile site. These are all expensive decisions, so I’d still like to understand a little bit more how iPad users are using the iPad. It would be different if there were no cost involved or if you could create once and use many times.
eMarketer: How are you marketing your mobile assets—the site and the app?
“Our mobile site has always played a very significant role in our consumer television ad campaign.”
Knitter: Our mobile site has always played a very significant role in our consumer television ad campaign, especially for the last two years, including our Super Bowl commercials. That is a huge way to reach folks. At the end of each spot, we don’t actually come out and say, “Hey, check out our mobile site!” It’s much more subtle than that. At the end of each spot we feature a protagonist accessing the Cars.com ad campaigns through their mobile device.
In the 30 days following the Super Bowl, the mobile site experienced a 42% gain in average daily unique visitors compared to the same time last year.
What you’ll see in the future from us is again weaving mobile into a wide variety of our promotional offerings. We find this communicates to consumers that we’re an innovative brand. It demonstrates the breadth of our offering, of which mobile is a part.
eMarketer: What are your objectives longer term from both a brand building and also a direct-response perspective for your mobile assets?
“We are very fortunate in that consumers do submit leads to dealers through their iPhone or other mobile devices.”
Knitter: I have to say we are very fortunate in that consumers do submit leads to dealers through their iPhone or other mobile devices. It’s possible to either click to call and enable e-mail leads. That’s our major revenue stream: from dealers. Our site functionality supports our dealer partners well. And national advertisers have really embraced our mobile offerings. The first two months of the iPhone app were sold out immediately, and we have a lot of interest going forward.
