Launched in 1998, just two years after its sister website in the United Kingdom went live, Auto Trader SA, has seen exceptional growth over the past decade and a half. It's one of South Africa's most popular websites, with millions of unique visitors every month.

First launched as a supplement to the Auto Trader magazine, which has had over 1000 issues since its first publication in 1992, and a circulation of over 15000 readers a month, the website didn't see the great success it has in recent years until South Africa's print media followed the global downturn in the industry. Suddenly, AutoTrader.co.za has become a more important property of its owners than the print magazine. In a turn of events, it seems like the magazine is now the one supplementing the website. To further understand the reason behind this and the rest of the online car sales space,  we made use of a recent survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers' research team.

According to the survey, if customers go to a brick and mortar store, in this case say a car dealership, they are 18% likely to make a purchase at that exact moment, while monthly purchases of this type where as frequent as 32% of the time. Of course, in this case, whole cars are the second most infrequent purchases next to property, so a better example would be say new tyres or windscreen wiper replacements. Nothing is shocking about these numbers because we are very used to buying things at a mall or stand-alone shops. It's always been that way. However, the situation becomes very different when the respondents of the survey where asked about their online purchasing experiences. The frequency of purchasing goods and services online a few times a year among South Africans is 45%, while those who make more regular monthly purchases did so 29% of the time. And one of the biggest sectors to benefit from this is the car industry and the various parties involved in the buying and selling of cars. Auto Trader SA's website has led this phenomenon for many years, and with over 30 million page views a month, it is today one of South Africa's leading cars classifieds website.

Exampling Auto Trader has certain qualifications that we need to make, mainly that the car buying process involves research, and that's where these sort of websites come in very handy, and making an online confirmation to book a viewing constitutes as a transaction in the PwC survey. The next part is visiting the dealership's showroom to inspect the car and possibly have a test drive. So since the launch of Auto Trader Online, the research part of car buying has moved away from flipping through magazine pages to find what you're looking for. Today, you just go to AutoTrader.co.za for example. The other benefit of this for consumers is the time factor. Consider that a magazine circulated a week before you grabbed one at the shelves, and by that time, the car you spot after browsing through many pages might have already been sold. Being online eliminates that, because only the available vehicles on sale will be listed.

When car sales websites first launched, there was no mobile web. Fast forward to the last two years, and with the penetration of smart phones like the Blackberry and Android devices, the car buying process has moved to mobile. The great thing about this is that Auto Trader SA and many others can reach more people, but unlike on a desktop, the research phase stays at that, with little completion of transactions. Of the South Africans surveyed by PwC, 51% of the time, people won't make purchases on their phones, and a whopping 60% won't on their tablets. So, yes, AutoTrader and the likes have more eyes looking at them, but those people don't fill out lead forms or buy anything from these devices.

It's worth noting, however, that the Auto Trader South Africa website cannibalized the magazine only after a few years since the online platform's introduction, and we wrote about that here. People first had to be familiar with using such a website to complete transactions. This is the same with mobile devices. South Africans have to gain enough confidence to complete payments online. It's inevitable that we will do, and at a faster pace than when we first adapted internet on a desktop.

Author: Pierre Theron