Apps to Revolutionise the Car Buying Experience

Motoring has become an increasingly costly business and far fewer people can now afford it on the back of the credit crunch.

Research by UK based price comparison company MoneySupermarket.com recently revealed that over 65% of motorists have admitted that they will be forced to change their driving habits in the near future due to rising fuel and insurance prices.

With vehicle choice being the most important factor in the determination of these expenses, a number of apps have been brought out to aid motorists who are on the look out for a new car; allowing them to find the cheapest insurance deals which are available on multiple different vehicles and also find the cheapest version of a particular model in their local area.

MoneySupermarket.com car insurance app

The MoneySupermarket.com car insurance app compares deals available through all the insurance companies that are featured on the MoneySupermarket.com website; providing quotes on offer with over 100 companies in total. This is the first app of its kind; allowing motorists to compare insurance prices while on the go through the iPhone.

Developed by award winning mobile technology company MIG (mobile interactive group) the app is currently available for download free of charge from either the MoneySupermarket.com website or iTunes. Although it is currently only available to UK motorists, MoneySupermarket's Julie Fisher believes that it will inspire other price comparison companies to release similar products for other markets in the near future.

Users are firstly asked to create a MoneySupermarket account (if they do not already have one). In order to create this, users must enter personal details about themselves which are relevant in the calculation of car insurance premiums. Factors such as age, gender, occupation and the area in which a person lives will all be considered. The advantage of creating such an account is that this information will not need to be entered every single time that a user is in such of a quote; saving them time and making quote retrieval a simpler affair.

MoneySupermarket has also made inputting vehicle information far easier, as app users will simply have to take a picture of a particular vehicle's registration plate. The app will then retrieve information which is stored about this vehicle in the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) database in order to calculate prospective premiums.

All of the quotes which are available through insurers featured on the MoneySupermarket website will then be displayed on screen with a click to call button alongside them which makes it easier to contact potential insurers about specific details within the policy or even arrange for the policy to be put in place.

Auto Trader

The Auto Trader app is also available free of charge through iTunes or the company's respective website, but unlike the MoneySupermarket app it is also to android phone users.

Users simply need to specify the credentials of the type of vehicle they are looking for in the search function which has enough filters to make it easy to find relevant vehicles. The kind of discriminating factors which can be entered by users include the age and mileage of the vehicle as well as the make and model. It then scowls the Auto Trader database of advertised cars to bring back relevant vehicles for users to look through. All of these will be displayed on an image-driven interface which is both easy to use and understand.

Vehicles which are on display in the results can then be added to a 'garage', which users can refer back to at a later date. Within the garage the app has a feature where individual performance characteristics of each vehicle can be compared against each other in order to find which vehicle would best meet the users' needs. The kind of performance criteria that vehicles are compared against include fuel economy, the car insurance group that the vehicle has been assigned to, practicality and key performance statistics such as acceleration rates.

The future of the car search

These apps should help to make the car search easier, allowing you to compare vehicles in your consideration set more easily against set criteria and find the cheapest deals available once a decision has been made.

Although both of these apps are UK specific, they are likely to inspire companies in other countries to release similar apps for their respective populations in the near future, with visitor traffic on apps have risen by 133% this year alone.