Last year, when Federal-Mogul announced its SmartChoice Mobile app, the company became the latest automotive parts provider to move into the mobile space. The app allows shop owners, service writers and technicians to use iPhone or Android devices to access parts information and communicate inspection data (including photos) directly to vehicle owners.
A number of aftermarket companies now make e-catalog information available via mobile devices, or have released mobile applications that make it easier to search for and purchase parts.
Interest in both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) mobile connectivity is increasing, although not every company has optimized their Web capabilities to handle mobile inquiries and purchases.
U.S. mobile Internet traffic nearly doubled in 2013, according to data from wireless industry consultant Chetan Sharma. Depending on the market, mobile traffic can account for anywhere from 28 percent to as much as 50 percent of a site's traffic. Globally, Statista puts mobile at 17 percent of all Web traffic. Internet traffic from mobile devices will exceed that of wired devices by 2016, according to ABI Research.
Adobe's 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey found that fewer than 50 percent of respondents had a mobile-optimized site or a mobile app. At the same time, Branding Brand reported that Black Friday sales on smartphone-optimized websites were up 187 percent in 2013.
That level of activity has pushed a number of companies to pursue mobility initiatives. Dorman Products launched a mobile version of its website in 2010, and Vertical Development announced a free mobile app for its ShowMeTheParts division that provides parts searches on smartphones. Bosch, O'Reilly, Denso, Auto Parts Warehouse and Summit also have announced mobile initiatives.
"Technicians and jobbers are becoming more dependent on digital access," says Brent Berman, manager of digital content and e-data for the vehicle component segment at Federal-Mogul. "Every branded company wants a way to communicate directly with the guy who throws away the box, so we started looking at all the digital elements we had at our disposal to do that. A lot of people are accessing our sites via mobile devices."
There are two basic approaches to mobile sales and look-ups. Companies can develop and launch mobile apps (as Federal-Mogul and ShowMeTheParts have), or optimize their existing websites for mobile access. Optimization is a good idea regardless, since an increasing number of customers are looking for parts on their phones and tablets.
According to Mark Toebben, president of Direct Communications (DCi), as much as 50 percent of the traffic on the websites his company has worked is originating from phones and tablets. Most of this is consumer-based traffic, but an increasing chunk will be from business-to-business activity among installers, jobbers, distributors and manufacturers.
Toebben says that many companies don't understand how important offering a mobile-optimized website is.
"Not everybody gets that," Toebben says. "A lot of companies aren't looking at it as closely as they should. A lot of executives haven't even bothered to look at their own websites on their phones. When we show them that the first time, then they really get it."
Optimization takes planning
If your website is not optimized for mobile access, potential customers will have a difficult time navigating and viewing the information they need. An optimized site can boost customer engagement.
The variety of mobile platforms now available (tablets, phones, notebooks, along with various operating systems) is a challenge to accommodate. Different devices have different size screens with different resolutions.
"We have to create look-ups that look the same regardless of the device being used," Toebben says. "People are more likely to stay on a website if they are looking at it on a mobile device and the site is mobile-friendly."
According to Berman, Federal-Mogul began redesigning its websites to be mobile optimized in the first quarter of 2013. Using adaptive (or responsive) design, the company relaunched its FMe-Cat and almost immediately saw an increase in mobile traffic.
"Right now we're seeing 10 to 12 percent of access on FMe-cat through mobile devices," Berman says. "
How labor-intensive that optimization process is depends on the underlying architecture of the site. "Some old platforms can't be converted, so in that case you're talking about creating a whole new website," Toebben says.
Images may also create a problem, depending on how they are formatted and sized on the original site.
At Federal-Mogul, the optimization effort took about five months. "There was a lot of beta testing," Berman says. "When you move to responsive design, what you really have to figure out is, as the screen gets smaller, you have to make decisions about what content you want to drop or maintain. For example, on our website we have a lot of downloadable PDF documents. Obviously, that's not conducive to a 4.5-inch mobile phone screen. We went through our entire website and decided what would be available on a desktop, and what would be dropped as we moved down to smaller screen sizes."
Still a small market for mobile apps
Some companies have launched full-fledged mobile apps that require users to download the app to gain the functionality. Federal Mogul's app includes VIN scanning technology, which links vehicle information to part and repair information via the company's www.FMe-Cat.com database. A "chat with a pro" feature connects shops with ASE-certified technical specialists at the Federal-Mogul Technical Education Center.
"The real benefit I see is enhancing the relationship with the technicians and establishing a communication link, an ongoing electronic dialog with technicians," Berman says. "This is a way to stay engaged with the technicians that wasn't possible before."
The company hired separate contract programmers for Android and iOS development. "In order to stay on top of the operating system releases, that's something that we don't want to have to do ourselves," Berman says. "It's easier to pay someone to stay on top of those things."
Another challenge was timing the rollout of the app on both the iOS and Android app stores.
"Apple has a more restrictive process, and it takes longer; Google tends to be a bit easier," Berman says. "We didn't want the Android version coming out three weeks before the iOS version, so managing the cadence was important."
So far, the company has reported 5,500 downloads (the majority of them at the shop level), and picked up a Frost & Sullivan customer value leadership award for its efforts. "We go through the entire purchase cycle within the app," Berman says. "We didn't just want to do an e-catalog look up. We wanted to have something a bit more robust, and we were pleasantly surprised to see how fairly even the usage has been across all the elements of the app."
However, Toebben says that apps are still the exception rather than the rule in the aftermarket.
"When you think about apps, the customer has to go look for the app and download it on to their phone," Toebben says. "The success of that is going to depend on your marketing strategy. You are generally better off just having them go to a website."
Who will use these mobile capabilities is still a moving target. There are some technicians and installers using tablets or phones while working on cars (at dealerships, more often than not).
"It's not that widely used yet," Toebben says. "Aftermarket companies aren't targeting any particular audience yet. For our customers, we try to make sure they know who is using their website, and be ready for whatever that user needs to see on the site."
Berman says he'd like to see more collaboration in the aftermarket on the idea of mobility.
"If the technician has a mobile device and can see the wiring diagrams and specs, wouldn't it be great if he had the ability to order from the jobber, look at the service repair information, get information from the manufacturer, and really see increased productivity by being able to diagnose the car, communicate with the customer, get information from the jobber, and see when the part is going to arrive because you've got geocoding at the car level?" he says. "I'd like to see this reach all the way up the supply chain to the guy in the warehouse scanning bar codes. Moving further up into the supply chain would get us into this real-time world that everyone talks about."
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