Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz USA has seen an uptick in mobile traffic over the past year and recently enhanced its mobile site to better reach and engage affluent consumers.

The company partnered with Usablenet to help develop its mobile-optimized site. Mercedes believes that the new mobile site will be an effective way for the company to communicate brand and product attributes to its customers.

“Mercedes partnered with Usablenet to create a luxury mobile experience consistent with its brand in response to the growing need of customers to use mobile as part of their vehicle purchase journey,” said Carin van Vuuren, chief marketing officer of Usablenet, New York.

“For example, Mercedes noticed that many of its customers were browsing vehicles while out on the weekends,” she said. “They recognized that the ideal mobile solution must enable consumers to search for Mercedes vehicles and complete their initial discovery on the go.

“Specifically, we worked with Mercedes to create a mobile experience that achieves two goals – first, to capture buyers’ interest when browsing Mercedes vehicles, and second, to build loyalty with existing Mercedes car owners.”

Mobile loyalty
Consumers can access the new mobile site by entering mbusa.com on their mobile browser.

The enhanced mobile site aims to provide affluent consumers with information that ensures that they are efficiently connected with Mercedes-Benz dealers at any time from their mobile device.

After seeing a traffic growth of 170 percent, as well as strong customer demand, Mercedes decided to add new features to better understand the car buyer’s behavior and needs.

On the new mobile site, consumers can discover and learn about the company’s full line of luxury vehicles through comprehensive specifications, high-resolution image galleries with carousel browsing and tap-tap zoom functionality and videos.

Additionally, the mobile site includes GPS functionality to make it easy for customers to find a nearby authorized dealer.

Through the mobile site, consumers can also customize vehicle interior options and change exterior colors.

“The Mercedes mobile solution effectively facilitates what the automotive customer most wants to accomplish when engaging with the brand via mobile,” Ms. Vuuren said. “The enhanced mobile site offers an experience that is contextually relevant by highlighting features and functionality that are helpful throughout the purchase phase all the way through the ownership phase.

“The mobile solution we built successfully enables Mercedes to help the mobile user find what they are looking for as quickly and elegantly as possible, which was a primary goal for the brand,” she said.

Driving experiences
By enhancing its mobile site and adding new and relevant features, Mercedes is able to connect with consumers on a deeper level.

Over the next year, more brands will recognize that it all comes down to the experience they want to create for their customer.

One size does not fit all when it comes to mobile.

“You need to create a relevant experience for each channel to address customer needs and context,” Ms. Vuuren said. “The mobile experience you deliver is increasingly a reflection of your brand’s overall relationship with the user.

“Successful mobile and multichannel engagement starts with having a deep understanding of what the customer is trying to do at each stage of the journey,” she said. “While mobile users want easy-to-use functionality like store locators and product research capabilities, tablet users want to dream and discover the brand in a touch-friendly environment.

“The in-store or on-premise experience sits at the center of this journey, with the ability of mobile to help lead to deeper on-property engagement by synchronizing the experience across channels.”

Final Take
Rimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York