Websites that maintain a focus on usability along with branding and design features successfully satisfy shoppers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Manufacturer Website Evaluation Study (MWES)—Wave 2 released today. However, the semi-annual study, now in its 11th year, finds websites that focus primarily on brand image and interesting design features can actually hinder shoppers in their search for information when usability takes a back seat.

The Cadillac and Scion websites are designed with an edgy, branding feel; however, both sites score lowest in the study’s appearance measure, in addition to ranking significantly below the industry average in every other measure: information/content, speed, and navigation. In the left-hand navigation of Scion’s home page, links to things such as a boom box and options for choosing the website background distract shoppers from vehicle shopping. Rather than a traditional pull-down menu, Cadillac’s menus appear inside an outline of the Cadillac badge that flips around forcing shoppers to learn an entirely new navigation scheme.

“Sites can miss the mark when traditional navigation is ignored in place of interesting design features.  Shoppers expect sites to function a certain way based on their experiences with other websites,” said Arianne Walker, director of marketing and media research at J.D. Power and Associates. “Failing to follow navigation conventions often makes it difficult for website shoppers to find the information they seek.”

Two of the highest scoring sites, Honda and Kia, each successfully focus on usability—allowing shoppers to access the information they seek in the shopping process quickly and easily. Due to their focused usability efforts, both Honda and Kia score significantly above the industry average in each of the four MWES measures.

“The Honda and Kia websites are great examples of incredibly straightforward sites that focus on getting appropriate information to shoppers easily and quickly, which has been a great recipe for their high MWES rankings in the recent past,” said Walker.

MINI, like Cadillac and Scion, also includes branding-oriented and untraditional navigation menus, design elements, and images on their website. However, MINI ranks significantly above the industry average by balancing their non-traditional elements with more traditional navigation menus throughout the site.

“The desire to provide a sense of the brand and a personality for the vehicles on the website can and should be considered,” said Walker. “But success in this area is also highly dependent upon balancing that branding feel with good usability, which MINI has achieved this wave of MWES.”

Understanding the critical importance of navigation is possible through this semi-annual study, which measures the usefulness of automotive manufacturer websites during the new-vehicle shopping process by examining four key areas: speed, appearance, navigation and information/content.

Honda ranks highest among automotive manufacturer websites for usefulness in new-vehicle shopping with an index score of 871 on a 1,000-point scale. This wave of MWES marks Honda’s 3rd time in the last 4 waves that they have delivered the most useful OEM website in the industry.  Following Honda in the rankings are Kia (868), Mazda (866), Acura (860), and Infiniti (860).

The 2010 Manufacturer Website Evaluation Study—Wave 2 is based on evaluations from more than 10,621 new-vehicle shoppers who indicated they will be in the market for a new vehicle within the next 24 months. The study was fielded in May 2010.

Ad Age recently published its 2009 database of the top 100 national advertisers.  Since many manufacturers are on that list, it’s a great opportunity to dive into recent trends.  The most obvious is that OEMs continued to slash ad spending in 2009.  Among the top manufacturers, the smallest decline was 18% by Ford Motor Company, while Nissan Motor Company’s plummeted by over 42% vs the prior year.

Hyundai had a big advertising push in 2006 to support the Azera launch, its beachhead into the premium market.  In that same year, Honda and Toyota also increased spending as they launched key models and took advantage of the country’s sudden appetite for smaller vehicles.  General Motors has been dramatically cutting every year since 2005, while Ford held the line until 2007.

Of course, the last two years have been particularly brutal for everyone.  Vehicles sales plummeted and automakers naturally responded by cutting costs, particularly in marketing and advertising.  When we look at the dollars being spent per vehicle actually sold, however, a different picture emerges.

Ford Motor Company’s spending per vehicle increased until 2007 and has been cut back only slightly over the past two years.  Meanwhile, General Motors dramatically increased its ad spend per vehicle (+34% since 2007) even as sales dropped precipitously with the continued market shift away from trucks and the divestiture/closure of several brands.  It’s also interesting to see that five years ago Nissan Motor Corp’s per vehicle spending was roughly double that of its peers – now, it’s middle-of-the-pack.

With automotive sales on the upswing in 2010, we will likely see ad expenditures follow, although continue financial pressure may limit the ability of some OEMs to fully support some of their programs.  Additionally, the emergence of lower-cost alternatives (e.g. Social media could become the predominant way to launch a new vehicle) may allow them to reach their audiences without the same historical level of spending.

With my recent mobile fixation, I’ve quickly realized that some automotive mobile sites are nearly impossible to find.  It’s hard enough to remember URLs such as http://suzukiauto.com, but good luck with http://mobile.volvocars.com/us/mobile/Pages/default.aspx or http://mobile.usablenet.com/mt/www.vehix.com.

Most people use search to find sites, but since the iPhone’s built-in Google search returns the main sites, finding the mobile site requires a redirect from the full URL.  In most cases, this works nearly seamlessly: when I go to http://www.chevrolet.com I get sent to http://m.chevrolet.com automatically.  Getting to the few sites (Acura, Jeep, Suzuki, Vehix, Volvo) that don’t redirect requires a substantial effort that few, if any, people would undertake (well, unless it’s their job.  Lucky me).  At least I’ve seen mobile ads for some, but that’s far from sufficient to drive traffic.

Cars.com has a unique approach on the iPhone.  It presents the main page with additional links to the mobile site and its iPhone application, which allows users to choose the experience they want.

Edmunds offers iPhone visitors an upfront choice.  It’s a nice method, but Fandango’s is slicker and simply looks better.

This doesn’t mean you should always redirect.  Many smartphone users may want to view the full site and should be given that choice, even if it’s a suboptimal experience.  Consequently, many mobile sites also offer links back to the main site.  In a few cases, however, the experience is so poor (especially because of Flash-reliant navigation) that they would be better off NOT giving that option.  Kia’s main site doesn’t even load on my iPhone while the Infiniti and Nissan sites basically tell you it’s not worth the effort.  But they’re the ones that linked me there!

My testing was limited to my iPhone and it may be easier to find mobile sites on other devices.  Still, it’s clear that our industry is still trying to figure out how to manage that interplay between multiple sites and multiple ways of accessing them.

Every so often I’m compelled to complain about the RFQ process.  My primary objection is that shoppers have learned the simple equation “RFQ = dealer contacts me.”  Now that we’re seeing more automotive mobiles sites, that means we’re also seeing more mobile RFQ.  And as I’ve written in the past (Mobile RFQ: Bringing a flawed system to a new frontier), that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Currently, eight OEMs offer mobile RFQ and all of them have created an experience that mimics the brand website.  Consider Mazda, whose two RFQ processes are minimally different:

• The mobile RFQ is spread out over three separate pages
• Mobile RFQ eliminates optional fields, e.g. address details and trade-in value information

Even with some process simplification, filling out the fields on a mobile phone takes much longer.  Fortunately, Mazda’s overall RFQ process is relatively painless.  When you get to a more involved RFQ, such as Infiniti’s and Nissan’s, the translation to mobile RFQ creates a more formidable user experience.

The brand and mobile sites require five discrete steps: 1.select vehicle 2.select model 3.select color 4.enter information 5. send to the dealer.  On a desktop computer, it’s relatively easy.  On my iPhone, it was a more substantial effort that involved large downloads (due to numerous images) and more required fields.

From a user perspective, the most straightforward mobile RFQ process came courtesy of Toyota.  I only had to go through two screens to fill out four fields and select the model, trim, and dealer.  This approach may reduce lead quality, but at least it’s in keeping with the brand site.

By comparison, Volkswagen threw out a few obstacles.  The mobile RFQ requires BOTH my home and mobile numbers, which is interesting given that the primary site only requires one phone number.  I don’t understand the point of making the mobile RFQ form MORE complex.  Further, “city” is not marked as a required field and yet I received an error that made me go back to fill it out.

In the course of exploring this topic, I submitted seven quote requests via OEM mobiles sites: Infiniti, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury, Nissan, Toyota, and Volkswagen.  My experience was pretty good – I received personal phone or email responses from six of the seven within one day and was only added to one email list.

Replicating the standard RFQ makes complete sense from a process standpoint.  Mobile RFQs can be fed through the same lead systems and the dealerships can work them in the exact same way.

But should they be worked the same way?   After all, these shoppers may be submitting mobile quote requests while they’re out on dealer lots, which means an even smaller timeframe for the dealership to get on their radar.  Out of my seven quotes, I received only one phone call within the hour.  That’s the only dealership that had a shot at my business that day if I had been out shopping.  Then again, in that case, I probably would have looked for local inventory and/or called the dealerships rather than go through an entire RFQ process.  Unfortunately, inventory is even rarer on OEM mobile sites.  But that’s a rant for another article . . .

Social media has become more important than ever before.  You need not look far to see signs of this, from last year’s Fiesta Movement and the “Meet the Volkswagen’s” Facebook page to the 2010 Volkswagen GTI iPhone.  Automakers are in the game and here to stay.  But why social media?  Charlie Taylor, general manager of VWs digital marketing, was asked “Why Facebook?” in an interview for USA Today last year to which he responded, “More and more consumers are selling products for us … Social media and word of mouth is much less about brochure downloads and more about brand awareness.”

When VW launched its 2010 GTI solely on a free iPhone game, Tim Ellis, VP of marketing, said the following in an interview with ABC News, “… we tasked ourselves to rethink the way we launch vehicles in order to engage our consumers in a meaningful way … Launching the all-new 2010 GTI via the Real Racing GTI App allows us to connect with this savvy GTI consumer within his or her everyday life in a way that no 30-second spot ever could.”

Through social media, manufacturers are attempting to leverage “the law of the few.”  To quote Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point “It’s not necessarily how many people you engage with, but the quality of engagement you have with a select few –Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen.”

Manufacturers’ budgets are constrained and their product teams are being forced to create more global products, putting pressure on distribution of marketing budgets across the fleet –begging for a new and more global solution.  What is more globally accessible than the Internet?  Could social media prove to become the predominant way to launch a new vehicle?  Certainly marketing costs could be greatly reduced using this approach, so then isn’t it more a question of reaching the right people at the right time?

The Ford Explorer used to be the king of SUVs.  At its peak, annual sales topped 440,000, but with the tire fiasco, higher oil prices, general market fragmentation, and recent recession, the Explorer has essentially become a niche vehicle.  In fact, only 50,000 were sold in 2009.

Rather than unveil the new Explorer in typical auto show fashion, Ford has decided to slowly reveal their latest All-New Explorer CUV on Facebook.  Interestingly enough, according to J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Prospects Current Behavior June release, 56% of new vehicle buyers can be found on Facebook in a given month.

Christopher Baccus, author of The Auto Marketing Blog has some interesting insight regarding Automotive Facebook Fan Page Strategies.  In the case of the Ford, they have decided to set up vehicle fan pages.  Ford has been gradually updating the Ford Explorer Fan Page with teaser photos instead of the typical gallery or even buff magazine shots.  Ford is also engaging fan questions on the page.  One fan asked whether a particular engine would be offered because he wanted to make sure it could tow easily.  The page manager had this to say, “Eric. More news to come soon on exact specifications on powertrains.  As you know, we are making sure that towing is assisted as much as possible for Explorer, not just in terms of absolute numbers but also how easy it is to tow and hitch up which is equally as important. Jay”

Between now and the Facebook unveiling, said to take place in July, Ford will show us bits and pieces, teasing its visitors and its 5,000+ Fans.  But as Mr. Baccus’s monthly report on Automotive Facebook Fans recently noted, there seems to be a shift away from the “become a fan” ad buys that were extremely popular last year.  It is uncertain however, whether Facebook has a new and more targeted method that is more difficult to measure or if manufacturers are moving toward accepting more organic fan growth.  If this is due to a shift to a more organic approach, the cost savings toward the campaign could be significant.  Also realize that the page will likely have many more visitors who don’t become fans, substantially increasing the reach of the Fan Page.

While Ford may have saved some money with this new approach, is it going to reach enough people and ultimately sell Explorers?  Certainly subsequent marketing will be TV and Print heavy, however in my opinion the formula seems to be set up for success:

• Facebook = 56% of New Vehicle Buyers
• Facebook and social media in general is made up of a great deal of Mavens and Connectors

Facebook certainly has two of the three pieces to create a tipping point.  Can Ford capture enough Mavens and Connectors through a Facebook unveiling to cancel future auto show unveilings?

Update: Chris Baccus recently wrote about the soft launch of Saab’s 9-5 via iTunes.

We’re in the midst of fielding a pilot study on the usability of automotive mobile websites, which means that I’m spending a whole lot of time surfing on my iPhone. One thing that stands out is the sheer number of these sites: 24 from OEMs and eight from third-party sites.

In the coming weeks, I’ll provide in-depth analysis on the suddenly-rich arena of mobile automotive Internet. In the meantime here’s a complete list of the 32 sites along with screenshots of their homepages.

Manufacturer Web Sites

Acura

BMW

Buick

Cadillac

Chevrolet

Ford

GMC

Honda

Hyundai

Infiniti

Jeep

Kia

Land Rover

Lexus

Lincoln

Mazda

Mercury

Nissan

Porsche

Scion

Suzuki

Toyota

Volkswagen

Volvo

Third-Party Automotive Web Sites

AutoNation

AutoTrader

Car and Driver

Cars.com

CarsDirect

Edmunds

kbb

Vehix

Every so often I like to compare the relative SEO performance of major automotive sites.  In the past, I’ve found that OEM sites do well on a few obvious keywords, but relatively poorly on more detailed searches that should lead to internal pages.

For this test I used a variety of search terms, including:

• Brand name
• [brand] + “dealer”
• [model name]
• [model name] + “colors”, “specs”, etc.

I ran these keywords through Google and looked for hits in the first ten results.  The targeted outcome for each search is a relevant OEM page with that specific information.  For instance, [brand] + “dealer” should link to the OEM’s dealer locator, while [model name] + “specs” would ideally return a page with the vehicle specifications.  Returning the home page or the model page is relevant, but not specific, and is therefore noted accordingly.

The worst performers in my test were Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Scion, Mercedes-Benz, and MINI.  The first three barely appeared in the top results while the latter two usually returned only the homepage, which forces the user to search within the site.  While all five sites are built entirely in Flash, we know that this doesn’t preclude effective SEO performance.  After all, top-performing sites such as Hyundai, Infiniti, and Volkswagen are also Flash-heavy.  Site developers need to put the work into making the content searchable (or at least associated with appropriate keywords) and perhaps provide a means for other sites to link directly to these pages.

Even with the laggards, I was encouraged to see that many searches returned links to internal pages.  This represents a marked improvement over my 2009 SEO field test.  For instance, in my latest test all but one Acura-based search returned a directly relevant page, whereas last year none of the specific searches did so.  Lincoln, MINI, Nissan, and Volkswagen also did substantially better.

The full field test results are shown below.

Korean automotive manufacturers entered the domestic market as the value alternative to mass market brands.  To consumers, that equation looks something like “inexpensive = poor quality / reliability.”  Once established, that reputation is difficult to shake off.  Over the past ten years, Hyundai has moved aggressively to burnish its quality/reliability image by improving the vehicles themselves and adding a then-unheard-of 10-year / 100,000 mile powertrain warranty.  Within five years, both Kia and Mitsubishi had followed suit.  (Note: all three manufacturers also have 5-year / 60,000-mile basic warranties).

The chart below trends historical reliability Hyundai, Kia, and Mitsubishi vehicles as measured by our Vehicles Dependability Study (VDS).  Since VDS measures the problems experienced with three-year-old vehicles, changes in the reliability of vehicles sold today don’t show up until several years later.

Hyundai and Mitsubishi demonstrated improved reliability shortly after rolling out their new powertrain warranties.  They were likely more comfortable offering that kind of long-term guarantee because they believed the vehicles would not be coming back to the repair shop frequently; otherwise, the long-term expense of the program could far outweigh the short-term sales benefit.  Kia’s long-term reliability, on the other hand, remained mired at the bottom of the industry for many years after the introduction of its warranty and only improved in the past year.

For both Hyundai and Kia, the warranties were part of an overall strategy that dramatically increased U.S. sales.  From 1999 to 2007, Hyundai sales nearly tripled to 467k and Kia sales more than doubled to 305k (Source: J.D. Power and Associates Forecasting).  In Hyundai’s case, the vehicles were more reliable, the warranty demonstrated the manufacturer’s faith in the product, and consumers believed it.

For Mitsubishi, the story is nearly inverted.  Sales peaked at 345k in 2002 and tumbled to 129k five year later.  In retrospect, the 10-year warranty (introduced in 2004, when sales tumbled by 60% from two years earlier) looks more like a desperate – and ultimately unsuccessful – attempt to stem the bleeding.  Their vehicles were better, but consumers either didn’t believe it or didn’t care.

That brings me to Jaguar.  The company’s reputation for questionable reliability was firmly established during the 1970s and 1980s and Jaguar has been battling that perception for nearly twenty years despite demonstrating generally good quality and reliability for more than a decade.  In fact, according to the J.D. Power and Associates Avoider Study, which measures the rate at which new-vehicle buyers don’t even consider competitive models, consumer avoidance of Jaguar because of reliability remains virtually unchanged over the past six years.

Jaguar has been hindered by a limited line-up, the carpocalypse of 2009 (which hit premium OEMs particularly hard) and another ownership change.  The company is trying to address consumer concerns with its Platinum Maintenance Coverage (see my earlier post on this topic).  While not as aggressive as the 10-year warranty programs, such coverage may give the company a fighting chance with some shoppers.  But as Mitsubishi’s experience shows, it takes a lot more than a generous program to reverse one’s falling fortunes.

Comprehensive maintenance programs, which are offered by several manufacturers, cover new-vehicle scheduled visits for a specified period of time.  These programs have multiple goals:

• Address consumer fears regarding [perceived] high maintenance costs
• Mitigate owner unhappiness with the cost of service visits
• Enhance loyalty by bringing owners back to the dealership

The financial savings can be analyzed via Edmunds True Cost to Own.  I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2011 BMW 3 Series against the 2011 Mercedes-Benz C-Class.  These directly competitive vehicles have nearly identical MSRPs, at $34,025 for the 3 Series and $34,475 for the C-Class.  BMW’s Ultimate Service program covers the first 4 years / 50,000 miles and has been in force for ten years.  Mercedes-Benz, on the other hand, dropped its coverage in 2005.

During the first four years of ownership, the C-Class is projected to cost $1,859 more in maintenance than the 3 Series Sedan.  Granted, new-vehicle buyers have many other considerations when making the decision, but 5% of MSRP is not an insignificant amount.  These programs also have high appeal for entry-level premium vehicle buyers, many of whom are making a major financial commitment for the first time.  Lessees will only be on the hook for their monthly lease payments, insurance, and fuel.

Other manufacturers with long-term maintenance programs:

• Jaguar (5 years / 50,000 miles) restarted its Platinum Coverage with the 2011 XJ Sedan
• MINI (3 years / 36,000 miles)
• Saab (3 years / 36,000 miles)
• Volkswagen Carefree Maintenance (3 years / 36,000 miles) added for 2009 models
• Volvo (3 years / 36,000 miles) reinstated for 2009 models

Several others cover the first 1-2 scheduled maintenance visits.

It only works if consumers believe in the value.  One indicator is the change in brand avoidance for maintenance costs – in other words, what percentage of new-vehicle buyers (who bought a competitive vehicle) don’t even consider that brand because of perceived high maintenance costs?  As shown as below, maintenance avoidance for BMW and MINI has declined dramatically since 2007, which indicates that both brands have made headway with upper funnel shoppers on the issues of maintenance.  Volvo and Volkswagen’s programs also seem to have had an impact, although we’ll need additional time look for a sustained impact.

Achieving these results takes time and a coordinated promotional/education effort: advertising, OEM site, dealer sales training, owner communications, etc.  To top it all off, the programs are expensive for the OEMs.  The uncertain nature of the ROI explains why some manufacturers have adopted programs even as others (e.g. Audi, Mercedes-Benz) have in the recent past dropped them.

Everyone knows that using Web sites can create tremendous frustration.  Things slow down for no obvious reason.  Crashes still occur.  And general site wonkiness and weirdness is still common.  The latter is especially hard to get right with so many different browser options.

Although Internet Explorer is still dominant, its 61% combined share is down from 68% just one year ago as rivals continue to gain share (Source: Net Applications).  Many IE7 users have migrated to IE8, but the increasingly antiquated IE6 continues to stubbornly hold on.

In our last wave of MWES, some manufacturer brand sites were dinged because of browser-specific issues.  So, I decided to try out all these sites across the latest versions of four major browsers: IE8, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 4.1, and Safari 4 (on Mac).  “Major” flags sites with inoperable navigation or tools.  “Minor” denotes errors that are merely annoying, e.g. formatting issues, minor functional problems, etc.

Firefox was the only browser that managed to render more than half of the sites perfectly during my completely unscientific field test.  Safari performed relatively poorly, with almost two-thirds of the sites creating some kind of error.

Fortunately, show-stopping errors were rare.  The most problematic issues occurred with audiusa.com on IE8: during the vehicle configuration process, the menus went completely nuts and stopped working.

Other major errors:

• BMW.  Inoperable menu in IE8.  Refreshing the page resolved the issue.
• Chrysler LLC.  The shared template between Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep wasn’t able to load vehicles into the competitive comparison tool on Chrome, rendering it completely useless
• Jaguar.  CPO inventory search didn’t work on IE8 or Safari.
• Kia.  Gallery didn’t load on Safari
• Mitsubishi.  Comparison tool threw an error page in both Chrome and IE8.
• Porsche.  Couldn’t launch major tools from the model pages in Safari.
• Scion.  Configurator wouldn’t launch on Safari.

Minor errors were mostly harmless and sometimes just plain perplexing.  For instance, mazdausa.com’s images on its Brochures and Downloads page were stretched out on IE8.

In all honestly, if I invested enough time I could probably create an error for almost every OEM brand site.  Still, it is clear that some sites are more at risk for delivering a suboptimal experience to a portion of its visitors.