Is It Time For a Pit Stop?
Why are some of the biggest names in the motoring industry missing so many opportunities online, and what can you learn from their mistakes?
First of all I’m almost certainly not the first internet marketing person to bring this up and until the situation improves I won’t be the last. The question is why do some companies with incredibly deep marketing pockets and well-established brands ignore the world of internet marketing and web design or at their very best do it badly.
Go to the UK branch for Ferrari and see what I’m ranting on about, take a couple of clicks into the site, see what you think and then revisit this article.
So you’ve been to the front page and what a great big waste of space. Who really needs to enter a site these days? Anyway I’ve just tried to enter the site as instructed and I was presented with a message about warranties on Ferraris (early Feb 08), still not getting the message across. I want to be offered a taste of the glamour and excitement of owning a Ferrari. I’m not the slightest bit interested in how I’m covered if things go wrong at this point as it’s almost like they’re presuming I’m going buy a Ferrari. What’s wrong with that? Not everyone who buys a Ferrari baseball cap at an F1 event wants to buy a Ferrari either but it reinforces their brand, they might as well have put a big sign up to send away anyone who’s not going to spend upwards of £80k and I can’t say too many of those people would be too impressed either.
Anyway, we’ve put up with the useless splash page and we’re into the main body of the website, yet more corporate talk about their exports and customer program … yawn. We’ve also got a picture of a Ferrari on the track too … fantastic, seeing as I’m going to be driving mine around the M25 in rush hour this really applies to me.
For a brand as exciting as Ferrari my first point of contact with the company could have left me asleep at the wheel. I did find the cars but nothing really pulled me in and grabbed me by the balls with no sign of an Enzo or FXX for me to get really excited, there’s no real interaction going on to say OK, you want a Ferrari, how would you like it, red, black, canary yellow, electronic start, leather, cloth, wait till you hear what it sounds like going through a tunnel … Oh well maybe I’ll try Porsche!
Ok, we’re now at Porsche UK, at first it looks quite understated. They seem to have gone for a nice clean look and in fact without overwhelming you with too much information when you first hit the site they’ve done a really great job of channelling visitors through and every now and again you get these little surprises jump out at you, which are sometimes enough to pull you in further. If only Ferrari could take a leaf out of Porsche’s website.
Also the way they’ve almost perfectly integrated their local dealerships into the whole experience is worth a mention as it takes the potential customer seamlessly all the way from researching a product to finding out where to buy locally without being sent off course and losing them to a competitor. Even though I’m not a big fan of Porsche I can’t refuse them credit for a very well designed website, but hey, we’re not that rich so I think we’ll have to settle for an Audi.
Welcome to Audi UK. What no hoops to jump through? No country or language selection or even a splash page? What do I do now? Exactly what you’ve visited their site to do … research and potentially buy their product … great! The website itself is ok and there’s a few nice features like the R8 mini site along with your regular customisation tools to make the car of your dreams, they’ve obviously got the technical ability to build a really great website but have settled for just above average which is a real shame seeing as Audi in my eyes brand themselves as a technically advanced firm.
So why have I just dragged you through 3 motor manufacturer websites giving you a running commentary?
Well, not every product is as exciting as a Ferrari or a Porsche but making your product interesting to the people who are looking for it, solving someone’s problem for them or maybe just taking down the barriers that stop people from having to think about finding what they want by cutting out complicated navigation or needless splash pages. All this goes a long way into turning a site visitor into a customer and not someone who’ll disappear off to your competitor’s websites. You don’t even need Flash movies and Web 2.0 style widgets to wow everyone.
What you do need first and foremost is to work out what’s going on inside the head of your visitor and then gear the content of the site accordingly, if the thoughts inside your visitors head pretty much match what’s on your webpage you will have made a connection with them and be in a better position to leverage a sale.
The biggest shocker for all three of the above firms is they don’t seem to be employing any real hard internet marketing and search optimisation tactics. Even when you have a worldwide brand you can still use search engine optimisation to great effect. For the regular business optimising a website usually means showing up on Google and Co for your core key phrases whatever they are ‘water pumps’ ‘cheap memory cards’ ‘titanium jewellery’. So what do you do if you’re Ferrari for example, everyone will have a good idea where to find a Ferrari online, but how about if your competitors have a known problem such as a fault on their electronic ignition. Don’t know about you but I’d be optimising pages on my site for ‘electronic ignition’ and ‘electronic start’ for example and then highlighting the competitions weaknesses as my strengths, it could be just enough to tip the balance for someone trying to weigh up buying one of your products against someone else’s.
This is what good internet marketing and web design is all about, not necessarily who’s got the deepest marketing and design pockets or who can build the most technically advanced website, but utilising simple ideas that cut down barriers between a customer and your product whatever they are, whether it’s being found in the right places by the right people or building a site which helps a customer easily find what they want. Either way don’t take it for granted next time you visit a big brand site that they know what they’re doing, think objectively and look for what they’re doing wrong, you could just come up with some great ideas for your own site.
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