One of the most compelling parts about responsive websites for car dealers is that they can be very attractive. The flexibility across different screen sizes gives them the ability to utilize all of the space properly, resulting in some of the best looking websites on the web.

This is great. It's also a minor point. The things that make responsive websites superior to other websites can be found in the numbers. It's the results that matter, the ROI, so I encourage dealers to dive deeper before they make decisions based upon asthetics.

Keep in mind that I own a company that provides responsive websites to dealers, so don't take this article as a stab against them. We became firm believers in responsive as the best way to build dealer websites long ago. The reasons why we love responsive websites are numerous and have very little to do with the appearance. The fact that they look amazing is a bonus, not a reason to use them.

Here are some of the real reasons that dealers should look at responsive over adaptive, mobile, or desktop-only websites:

• Most of the Industry is Converting (at least attempting to convert): I get amused when I see another website provider who was staunchly against responsive design in the past making the switch today. Even the larger OEM-level providers are or have attempted switching to responsive. This is a sign that they're seeing the benefits and wanting to take advantage of them.
• They Can Save Dealers Money: I have to stress the word "can" in this statement. There are plenty of responsive websites out there in the $1000-$2000 per month range which means that a dealer is likely not saving money with those, but if you have a reasonably priced responsive website solution, you no longer have to pay the extra to have a mobile website. When built properly, they are often less expensive than their adaptive counterparts.
• Responsive is Ideal for Content Marketing, SEO, and Social Media: The consistency in content that is inherent in responsive websites makes them perfect for those dealers who are trying to dominate. That's why I wanted this article on Driving Sales. If you're reading this, you probably fall into that category and thus you're likely to want to improve your content, organic search, and social media marketing.

There are plenty of other reasons, but the appearance of the website is not one of them. When we look at ROI, we take into consideration reasons such as the ones I listed. The industry's (and most of the internet's) shift towards responsive websites means that people inside and outside of the industry are seeing return on their investment. Otherwise, the crowd mentality would not be embracing it so readily.

Saving money on your web presence while improving your content, SEO, and social media makes the ROI equation easy to solve. More sales for fewer dollars - that's what ROI is all about.

There are good and bad responsive websites. There are good looking and bad looking ones. The real key to making the most out of them is to make decisions based upon results rather than appearance.

Web developers started touting the benefits of the responsive website content since the dawn of smartphones, but it was more for functionality rather than increased visibility. It wasn't until 2011 and 2012 when large companies like Google started promoting the concept that the SEO world opened their eyes to the search ranking benefits.

We believe wholeheartedly in responsive websites for dealers, not just because Google likes them, but because they present a better experience for your customers. Still, the SEO aspect cannot be ignored, so I've put together a small list of reasons that responsive website design is a strong play for improving your organic search engine rankings.

Every Page Visible

Dealers and vendors can debate about whether Google is truly "promoting" responsive website design or if they're simply listing them as the first option when discussing mobile website interfaces, but one this that Google and Bing have said that cannot be debated is that they like a 1-to-1 page ratio between mobile and desktop pages.

The way that they look at it is this: people will search from multiple devices. Both search giants are actively pursuing a stronger mobile play since more people are doing searches on their smartphones and tablets. One of the biggest roadblocks for them is when a corresponding mobile page does not exist for its desktop counterpart.

With many dealer websites, a page that exists on the desktop version does not exist on mobile. As a result, many websites will redirect to the homepage or present a 404 error. This is not good for the search engines because it's not good for their customers: the people doing the searches.

With responsive website design, a page that exists on desktop will also exist on mobile. It resides at the same URL as well, so there are no redirects to deal with from device to device.

Consistency. That's something that the search engines crave in a world that is moving increasingly towards mobile.

All Important Content is Available

This is the biggest argument that can be made against adaptive websites. Yes, adaptive websites will often maintain a 1-to-1 page ratio, but the content volume and display changes, often dramatically.

With adaptive websites, a different page is delivered to mobile devices than what is delivered to desktops. The URL remains the same, which is good, but a good chunk of the content is lost. This can include the HTML content important for SEO such as headers, body content, links, and images, all of which play an important role in search engine rankings.

Time on Site and Bounces

One of the big arguments that mobile website companies make is that they simplify the mobile experience and reduce the page size for quicker loading. These are both valid points when it comes to SEO and they were real problems when mobile speeds were slow, but today, more WiFi is available everywhere and 4G speeds are definitely fast enough to prevent any negatives associated with slow page loading.

More importantly, responsive websites viewed on mobile devices are more robust. It's possible to point to some responsive websites in our industry and note that they have too much going on or that the proper resizing of components isn't happening, but our responsive websites are built properly to take full advantage of mobile the mobile interface.

In other words, the complaints made about bad responsive websites are only valid for bad responsive websites. Great ones have made the pages robust while maintaining strong functionality and the ability for visitors to interact easily on their mobile devices.

These are big plusses in the SEO world because of the time on site and bounce rate factors that Google and Bing take into account.

The Changing Industry

It's hard for many dealers to let go of their attachment to larger automotive website vendors. With some OEMs, it's mandated. With others, it feels safer to work with a company that has thousands of clients rather than one that has hundreds.

Proper use of responsive website design for both it's lead generating and traffic generating abilities is the most compelling argument for dealers to consider in a company. Bigger is no longer better in a nimble automotive digital marketing environment that we're faced with today and on into 2015.

It really should go without saying, but we've seen so many of low effort attempts at advertising over the last few months that it became necessary to bring the topic up. Your advertising should be amazing every time.

We've seen poor creative being passed off as banner ads, poor-quality ads being posted to YouTube and even broadcast on television, and weak messages being sent out through direct mail, social media, and other places. It didn't used to be like this, but as the automotive ad agency world gets saturated, the quality level seems to be dropping.

You're paying your ad agency good money and they need to put forth their full effort on every single piece of advertising you do. From the dealership's perspective, you need to expect more and demand as near to perfection as possible. There is no room for thoughts like, "It's not the best but let's run with it this month."

That's not how successful dealers do it. They never mail it in. They make certain that the quality level is exactly where it needs to be, that the creative is perfect, and that every aspect of the ad is as good as it can possibly be.

Your advertising should be a masterpiece every time, especially if you're working with an ad agency. It's their job. There's a reason that the cars on your showroom are shiny, why you won't let fingerprints linger on the windows, and why it should be sitting at the perfect angle. It's that type of attention to detail that separates the best from the rest in our industry and your ad agency should not be allowed to offer anything less.

What have we learned from all of the studies?

There seems to be a ton of them coming out lately saying that social media isn't working, SEO isn't working, television isn't working, classified listings aren't working... the list is ongoing. If all of the studies are to be believed, one might come to the conclusion that nothing is actually working anymore.

There are, of course, vendors who will argue that this strategy is dead or that strategy is working just fine, but the "dead or alive" label is always selectively placed on whatever best fits the vendor's product line. If they sell it, then it must work great, right?

The reality is that nothing works because nearly everything is working. I know it sounds like a contradiction, but hear me out.

Let's put aside the ones that really, really aren't working. Flash websites aren't working (and yes, there really are still some of them out there). Spammy SEO tactics aren't working (thankfully). Posting bulk content to social media isn't working (and really never did). There are truly a handful of marketing practices that are no longer working, but the vast majority are working. They're just working differently.

Craigslist was pronounced dead by many (including some on this network) after they started charging, but most of the numbers we're seeing show that it really is working, perhaps better now than ever. We don't offer a Craigslist product but we can see the results. It's a perfect example of how changes to a marketing or advertising venue do not necessarily mean their demise.

SEO and PPC have undergone tremendous changes over the last couple of years and there were many companies that had to stop offering their products to car dealers because of these changes. However, these changes did not spell doom for the strategies themselves. They simply needed to be adjusted.

Looking at the website debate that seems to be brewing and that will likely get more contentious in the coming months, some would say that mobile websites are dead. Despite the fact that we offer responsive websites, we aren't going to be one that declares mobile websites as dead. We simply know that responsive is better.

The point is this: channels aren't dying as quickly as the studies would have us all believe. They're changing, and it's not just the technology. The way that people view the world is changing, whether through their digital lens or through the real world perspective against the backdrop of traditional advertising. These changes are creating a whirlwind that's blurring the effectiveness of individual components within the automotive marketing landscape.

This is adding confusion to the advertising world, but there's a silver lining to it all. When everything is seen from a wide view and managed together cohesively within a personal and narrow system, it's possible to take it all to the next level.

Welcome to modern multi-channel automotive marketing.

The Lockstep Strategy

One of the biggest roadblocks that dealers face is the lack of inter-vendor communication. It's common for dealers to have one website provider, one SEO provider, one PPC provider, one social media management firm, and one traditional advertising agency all working independently on the marketing and advertising strategies for the dealership. Compartmentalizing has benefits in certain arenas, but advertising and marketing are not amongst them.

They need to be doing more than communicating. They need to be coordinating. They need to be working towards the same goals and operating within a framework of mutual effectiveness rather than doing whatever is going to position their product in the best light.

This isn't just a matter of the right hand talking to the left hand. It's a complex operation to try to properly put out the right marketing message to the local masses. Think of it less as a function of a right hand versus left hand and pretend like it's a car. The engine can be powerful, but if it's not synced up with the transmission, you're not going to get very far.

Having regular meetings with every vendor together is one way to do it. The other way is to go with a one-stop-shop, but be careful. There are only a handful that do it properly. Most are good at one or two things and offer the other components for revenue purposes, but it's hard to find a company that can truly do everything well. In many cases, the departments within the same company aren't even really talking to each other.

We go into further detail on our post about tearing down the walls between traditional and digital advertising. It's important for dealers to get the various marketing avenues pointing in the same direction in order to take advantage of all the benefits of multi-channel marketing.

One of my biggest complaints about some vendors in our industry is that they make reputation management seem like it requires extremely specialized talents in order to make it work for car dealers. They would have you believe that you cannot manage, monitor, or influence your own reputation and that it takes extreme talent and a complex strategy to make it happen.

As much as I would love to pitch our own reputation management solution here, I'll keep it simple. Reputation management isn't hard. In fact, it's the complicated measures through which many vendors attempt to manipulate your reputation that gets dealers and other businesses in trouble. Here, I'll break down the steps that make up a real reputation management system:

1. Deliver Great Customer Service - Just as we do with our own clients, dealers that are treating their customers fairly and with respect have a better chance of maintaining a positive reputation online. That doesn't mean that great service will definitely yield a great online reputation or that bad service will definitely blow it online, but it's easier to have a strong reputation when it's reflected as such in the real world.
2. Monitor - This is the first step for us. We might not be able to help you deliver great customer service, but we can definitely monitor the review sites for you and let you know when reviews are left. This also means monitoring social media sites for mentions, something that most are avoiding for whatever reason.
3. Ask for Reviews - With a properly worded email template, you can engage with your sold customers and service customers and encourage them to leave you a review. Those who are unhappy usually don't need prompting, but even your biggest fans often need a reminder that you could use their support publicly.

That's pretty much it. The companies that are promoting 10-step processes for getting a better reputation are doing so to justify their silly prices for the service. If you have any questions about reputation or if you would like to know how WorldDealer can help you manage yours, please feel free to reach out to me.

They say that no good deed goes unpunished and great things will eventually be spoiled. This happened to microsites in recent years. What started off as a great strategy was overused and abused by some vendors to the point that now many dealers are scared to touch them.

Here's a brief timeline in case you're not familiar with the evolution of microsites. ADM chief Ralph Paglia was actually one of the pioneers in the microsite world when he brought them to Courtesy Chevrolet a decade ago.

It was a secret weapon for a handful of dealers and something that very few vendors offered. They would bring in great traffic and could generate leads. Then, people started catching wind. Vendors started offering them and in some cases absolutely abusing them for both SEO and general spamming reasons.

When Google Panda was released in 2011 and then when Google Penguin was released in 2012, they went a long way to killing off low-value microsites, especially the automated ones. Many vendors stopped offering them.

Now, we're back as an industry to be in an upward swing. With fewer doing it and with the technologies improving, we believe that they are now a valid strategy again. To prevent them from being abused, here are a couple of key points about them:

• Do NOT Automate Them - The biggest reason the bubble burst in the first place is because too many companies in and out of the automotive industry started creating really low quality and often automatically-generated pages. These are worthless and will actually do some harm to your marketing.
• Stay Focused - We talked in-depth about microsites on our website, showing that it's extremely important keep a page focused on one goal at a time. If you try to accomplish too much, you'll actually accomplish nothing.
• K.I.S.S - You're not selling a car or describing a complex lease plan with microsites. You're just trying to get inquiries. Less is more. Don't overdo the content.

There are other best practices that we know have an impact, but the important thing to post about publicly is that microsites are, for the most part, dead. This means that those who "revive" them the right way can reap more benefits than ever before.