Dealership Alert – Internet Explorer’s Phase Out And Its Effect On Your Website

A dealership’s first and best salesman is its website. The vast majority of customers are now researching online before they ever set foot in the store, and for that reason it is hugely important that dealership management personnel be aware of important Internet updates that will impact their business. The latest update to be aware of – Microsoft has officially ended support for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 as of January 12, 2016.

Why is this important for our dealership clients to know? Many of the web-based applications that they actively use on a daily basis may only be available on one of these versions of Internet Explorer. At this point, most developers have transitioned into directly building software for alternate browsers such as Google Chrome. Until now, they have continued to support and upkeep software on Internet Explorer as well. But as of last week, that will no longer be happening.

Supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer can hurt dealers in a few critical ways. First and foremost, it is a threat to a dealership’s security via their website. With financial applications and e-commerce activity taking place on a dealership site, a fully secure user experience is crucial. There is now a much higher potential for security risk on Internet Explorer, and it isn’t just Microsoft that is beginning to drop support for it – other major companies such as Facebook and YouTube will do the same.

Less threatening but equally important to consider is that an outdated browser also prevents web developers from making functionality improvements to dealership websites. A responsive platform upgrade, arguably one of the most important updates a dealership can choose to make for their website, would be incredibly difficult for a developer to perform for high quality visibility on an unsupported Internet Explorer browser.

For a higher quality and more secure experience on the Internet, end users should use a modern browser. However, Dealer Spike recognizes that there are still many Internet users – many of them part of our dealership network’s customer base – that will continue to use Internet Explorer. While support will phase out completely at some point, as of now Dealer Spike is committed to maintaining our dealerships’ best interests and supporting the potential customers that visit their sites.