Auto Trader, one of the most important car classified selling sites in Britain, has recently launched its new brand identity. This is part of an ambitious plan of expansion in the future.
Auto Trader’s previous logo had not changed in 37 years and was especially designed for the printed magazine, which stopped publication in summer 2013. Auto Trader has recently become a digital-only outlet.
The new chief executive of Auto Trader, Trevor Mather, said that Auto Trader usually has about 460,000 cars for sale at any one time. He also said that the site is the biggest car buying and selling site in the UK.
“We have between 16 and 20 million users come to our website each month,” he said. “The average person now spends 18 hours on buying a car—and 11 of those hours are online. The rest is spent on test drives and visiting dealers.”
Buyers increasingly use the internet to research their new purchase, and Mather said that most users now prefer the digital delivery. “Auto Trader magazine had a print run of 90,000 versus our 16 million online visitors this month—so you can see why it was a natural move to close the printed mag.”
The new boss said Auto Trader had 41 different sub-brands, from selling agricultural machinery to back-end systems for car dealers. “I want to simplify that to just one or two,” he said.
He promised to improve the way Auto Trader treated the motor trade and admitted in the past, the company had not always had a good reputation with used-car traders. Mather added that Auto Trader had to be cautious because of its dominant market position.
