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Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a few of our auto dealer website clients have asked what we are doing to keep up with the advances with HTML 5.  Since it seems to be a topic of concern for multiple dealers, I wanted to share what DealerOn is working on.

First, most people that are asking about HTML 5 are concerned about how their website will look on iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices.  Since Apple excluded Flash compatibility from their platforms, they are using HTML 5 as their preferred direction.

While DealerOn dealership websites do use some Flash, we are moving away from the technology.  When a site uses Flash, visitors to the site who don’t happen to have the right Flash version installed get a screen telling them to update their plug-in.   We’ve found that this dramatically increases bounce rates for a page or site.

Currently, Mobile devices constitute roughly 10-15% of a well-optimized dealer website.  Over half of this traffic is from devices that will not use Flash.  For a fee, DealerOn can build a completely Flash free site for those dealerships that see a large amount of their website traffic come from Apple products.

For others concerned about HTML 5, I want to point out that the technology is still classified as being under development.  It has not been released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is in charge of developing and instituting standards for the Internet.

DealerOn’s current major technology focus includes implementing all of the latest web technologies.  Once HTML 5 is released for stable public use and major web browsers start conforming to its standards, DealerOn will begin to ensure our websites are HTML 5 complaint, across the board.

As always, please feel free to contact DealerOn with any questions about our technologies, products, or online marketing tools.

True to its nature, the Internet is changing again.  2012 should see the emergence of new domain suffixes like .eco, .love, and .god.  And of course, this isn’t without some controversy.  This will open a ton of possible domains, which could either make the Internet more intuitive (you’d know what type of site you were going to if it have the domain suffix .god, for example) or confusing (who gets control of john.smith?).  There are currently 21 domain suffixes in use right now like .com, .org, and country suffixes.

A small non-profit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will be responsible for determining which sites have the rights to which domain suffixes.  The organization will start accepting applications from companies and governments, though the application process costs $185,000; organizations that are able to operate a domain also have to pay ICANN $25,000.  For controversial domains, ICANN plans to use “morality and public order” as their guidelines for approval.

I’m curious…what do you think of this opening up of domain suffixes?  Would you want your auto dealership website to have access to a .auto or .dealership suffix?  Even if it had a large cost attached to it?  Do you think it will make the Internet more intuitive or confusing?