Tim Smith said: “The experience of Jardine’s and Ridgeway illustrates the massive untapped potential that still exists.”

By incorporating a left-to-right scroll action rather than the traditional up and down, Jemca Car Group’s web designers, Responsive Digital, now rebranded as Razoom, aimed to replicate tablet usage, while the ‘intelligent’ website itself determines whether a browser is a returning visitor and tailors content accordingly. When comparing December 2013 with December 2012, new car enquiries for the website, launched last summer, are up 650%; service by 300%; and total web traffic has surged by 76% with tablet up 210% and mobile by 189%.

Benfield Motor Group’s group digital sales and marketing manager Mark King decided to bring digital and web design in-house to accelerate the turnaround process and for greater control. Stoneacre, which relaunched its website last year, also has its own in-house team of specialists, who have netted exceptional results, such as an almost three-fold increase in online-generated finance enquiries from August to December 2013, compared with the same period in 2012.

It followed a number of web enhancements including highly visible ‘buy now’ buttons, resulting in more click-throughs to its shortened finance form. This reduced drop-offs and boosted enquiries. Capturing data at each stage of the finance form also enabled the group to follow-up mid-application drop-offs. All in all, online finance enquiries are up 35%, contributing to a 281% increase in the number of units dealt via its website in the final quarter of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012.

Stoneacre managing director Shaun Foweather said: “We’ve undergone a dramatic transformation in our web presence over the past year, along with the way in which we generate leads as a business. Establishing our dedicated in-house web team has been key to this.”