The tablet site invited shoppers researching competitors to compare with a similar Kia vehicle. They could then further customize their Kia with a few taps and literally, bring the car to life on the screen. Throughout the process, users can also tap, pinch, zoom, and swipe to see all angles of their car in 3D, as well as view the estimated cost based on desired customizations.

Further mimicking the showroom experience, tablet users could send the specs to nearby dealers for an exact quote, check local inventory or even chat and text with a Kia dealership directly.

Tablet updates were the perfect solution for our couch shoppers.

With the digital showroom enhancements:

• Almost 800 competitive comparisons were generated daily

• Use of the Build & Price customization feature increased by 45%

More important, our goal of increasing consumer contact with dealerships far exceeded expectations:

• The number of quote requests received by dealers increased by136%

• Interest in local dealer offers increased by 40%

• Use of Inventory Lookup on the tablet began delivering over 11% of all digital leads

Even mobile searches for local dealers on the smartphone site increased by 3X, demonstrating a halo effect from the overall improvements.

Kia is no stranger to mobile. The brand’s mobile site redesign has garnered several industry accolades – including a JD Powers award based on user feedback. With the addition of a tablet optimized site, Kia began seeing differences in visitor behaviors across tablets, and smartphones.

On tablets, visitors were more likely to use the Kia Build & Price customization tool more than once– and over 2 times more likely to customize multiple models --- indicating they were at that critical stage preceding a final vehicle selection. By contrast, smartphone usage was more likely to happen after the vehicle decision, and shoppers were over 3times more likely to leave the site right after customizing one model.

We saw the perfect opportunity to connect our tablet visitors’ consideration behaviors with a seamless digital dealer experience. How could we bring the Kia showroom into consumers’ living rooms using the larger, immersive tablet screen?