{"id":4995,"date":"2023-12-11T10:47:48","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T18:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarity.microsoft.com\/blog\/?p=4995"},"modified":"2025-07-30T10:03:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:03:51","slug":"5-browsing-patterns-of-the-modern-mobile-car-shopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarity.microsoft.com\/blog\/5-browsing-patterns-of-the-modern-mobile-car-shopper\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Browsing Patterns of the Modern Mobile Car Shopper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My name is Alex Griffis, and I’m the President of Overfuel<\/a>, a website and digital retailing platform servicing automotive dealerships across the US. Our customers, both large and small, use our platform to power their digital showrooms and reach more consumers. Whether it’s a franchise dealership (Honda, Nissan, GM) or a pre-owned independent, our job is to provide the best online shopping experience possible to ensure consumers find the car that meets their needs. 
 
Since over 80% of online car shopping starts from a mobile device, we must offer an intuitive, seamless, mobile-first experience. With Microsoft Clarity, we implemented session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, and insightful analytics to make significant UX improvements to our products. We sampled a variety of websites with varying conversion rates, lead volume, and overall website traffic to look for common threads across different demographics. After seeing many positive results, we’ve highlighted the five most common browsing patterns of the mobile-first car shopper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Searching Inventory is the #1 Most-Clicked Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When a potential customer lands on your website, they want the least path of resistance to finding a vehicle that meets their needs. Overfuel and other leading direct-to-consumer products like Carvana focus on several best practices to drive more conversion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Lead with inventory search:<\/strong> make it easy for customers to find what they want. Excellent search functionality doesn\u2019t end with makes and models; great search functionality is graceful<\/em> and allows a margin for error. Detecting common misspellings and making intelligent suggestions based on input significantly improves customer experience.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Follow with vehicle types:<\/strong> the second most common filtering behavior is vehicle type (cars, trucks, SUVs).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Keep everything above the fold:<\/strong> 8 out of every ten customers leave the homepage before scrolling 25% of the page, so keep your calls to action clear and visible above the fold.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Most Consumers Find Live Chat Annoying<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Sorry, live chat, but it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On the vehicle detail page, across several customers with live chat, we found that the #1 most-clicked item was the close<\/em> button on live chat products<\/strong>. The data supports what we\u2019ve been saying for a long time: stop<\/em> annoying your customers by interrupting their experience with pop-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    If a customer wants to contact you to ask a question, they will!<\/em> How do we know? Aside from the photo gallery, the remainder of the top 10 most-clicked items are lead-generating: click-to-call, personalize your payment, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Ordering Your Inventory by What Sells Best, Not What Costs the Most, Drives Better Engagement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    If you\u2019re leading with price, your SRP becomes stale quickly. It doesn\u2019t allow newer or more popular inventory to cycle in and out. Upon reviewing the data, for the customers who aren\u2019t searching for an exact vehicle, the behavior pattern is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n