Dealers need to look at making their websites smartphone friendly as smartphone penetration is rapidly growing in the UK and now stands at 46%.

Nearly 50% of smartphone users go online multiple times a day and of those users looking at local information, over a third called and a third visited a local business, according to research from Our Mobile Planet 2011.

Automotive website designers AutoExposure says dealer websites need to be responsive and adaptable to all screen sizes – if they don’t, they are in danger of losing the user’s interest which results in them leaving the site altogether.

Each mobile now has a different size screen, from an iPhone, new Nokia or a mini tablet such as Samsung.

Wolverhampton Mazda has recently launched a smart device compatible website which was created by AutoExposure.

Richard Blenheim, sales manager at Wolverhampton Mazda, said: “We were aware that increasing numbers of our web visitors were looking at our site via mobiles devices and that they were not getting a good experience.

“Our site was not optimised for mobile, so visitors could not access some of the site and it was very difficult to navigate the pages.

“So we decided to call in some specialists who built us a new responsive site. Now our web visitors have a good experience on our site – whether they are accessing it from their iPad or smartphones. It’s still early days but we have seen an uplift in traffic from mobile devices.”