Reach 71% of mobile internet users: Support Safari.

The majority of automotive websites are optimized for the most popular version of Internet Explorer and rarely take into consideration Safari, a browser that represents less than 10% of the web browser market and 71% of mobile browsing.

With aggressively growing iPhone sales in the Smart Phone market, you have an entire audience of potential customers on the go and connected to the Internet. All you need to do to bring your dealership’s website to them is to make sure your website functions in Safari. As mentioned above, most companies who build web applications and websites build for the masses, which means Internet Explorer. The iPhone uses Safari as the default browser (and only browser at the time of this writing) to display your dealership’s website. If your site looks good and functions correctly in Safari for the desktop, you’re on your way to iPhone ready.

If you’re a DHD customer, grab an iPhone and look at your Dealer HD website, you’ll notice that everything functions as it normally would in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Mobile visitors from iPhones can access every page of your website, zoom into into content areas, submit forms, view vehicle photos, specials and coupons. I’ve taken a few screen shots from my iPhone to illustrate some of the points above. As you can see, everything is highly visible, clean and organized. iPhone users can double tap, pinch zoom and scroll to the information areas easily.

While there are many other mobile devices that connect to the Internet it’s important to recognize Safari as a major player in the mobile space and making sure that your website functions in an iPhone is critical to your mobile marketing strategy.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Click for actual iPhone screen shot.

Tags: browser support, Internet Research, iPhone, mobile, Safari

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Mobile Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.