BTW: The Chevrolet site that was recently designed with web standards rocks the freakin’ house. One of the best car sites, hands down.

I personally like the Acura site myself. Very nice nav.

No, you shut up! Oh, wait. Sorry.
Yeah, that chevy site looks good. The Acura nav is okay, but I have to know what all the TLAs mean. They could take up some space by showing what the car is before you click. Oh wait, they do. But even though the nav persists throughout the site, the drop-down images on the homepage aren’t there on the sub pages.

What other sites are actually good? I have to admit that I was overwhelmed with the crappypoodunkus (technical term) sites out there that I didn’t go looking for good ones.

Scion’s site is one of my favorites. It’s mostly Flash, but it’s easy to find everything, they show you the price up front, and they have a really cool car configurator to let you customize your car online and see what it will look like, giving your real time price quotes with estimated monthly payments. They also offer tips on financing, whether to lease or buy, etc.

I for one would like to see more information than is often available. And forget about navigation. Frequently it doesn’t make sense or isn’t easy to get around. I can bop around the web with the best of them, but it’s annoying when htings aren’t where they should be, or are more difficult than they should be.

And more pictures. Always more (good) pictures.

The new site for Ford http://www.fordvehicles.com/ is definately a kickass! They decide to go flash for most of the site. Great work by F-I & 2A

Be sure to check out the interactive modules for Ford SuperDuty and F-150

Hey Morpheus, you’re right about the Ford site in that it’s hot, however it’s a little more difficult to link directly to things (LIKE PICTURES!!!!!!!!!) because it’s all in Flash.

2A did that? Damn, that’s awesome. Some of the finest Flash designers around.

Its true that flash has that weakness in that u cant link directly or sometimes even search thus rendering the sites low in the search engines.

Why flash? Well, let Martin of F-I answer that

I know for sure 2A did the SuperDuty Microsite. The rest of Ford’s Site was done with F-I and JWT.

And yes F-I & 2A are among the top flash designers (in the world). They rank 1 and 2 respectively in my list

oops JWT

I know I dinged them on the use of Flash, but for the record, I like Flash designed sites. However, I feel that a lot of Flash designers concentrate more on fade transitions and cool “loading” icons rather than supporting the user goals in searching for information on the site.

Primarily I mean this toward commercial sites. Even though they don’t really sell cars on their sites, they are still commerce-supporting.

If the user cannot find it on your site, your product/service doesn’t exist.

That Scion site is nice, but the way the main pic on the homepage keeps trying to change is very distracting from scanning the rest of the page to see what they offer. That build your own car system looks nice, but doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s my modified version of IE6? But there is something on there that says Click here to install viewpoint control and enable animations. So I have to install extra software to make it work? Haven’t they heard of Flash?

I can’t tell you what the Ford site looks like because I still am getting the “you don’t have Flash” error (must be a bug with my use of IE6… I know not many people use that browser).

That JWT site is nice, but scroll all the way to the right on the “People” page. They need to fix that.

I’ve always liked the VW site for the limited use of flash, and their fairly straightforward html-based “build your own” site.

I’m looking for a new car now and I’ve been surprised that painful flash “build your own” applets that run in tiny popups seem to be the norm.

And I also hear you on the bit about a lack of information. A car company should make an effort to present superficial information on first glance, but let users drill down for more info. I’m thinking about some form of an SUV, and I’ve found that Edmunds.com is the only place I can track down the actual interior storage space in cubic feet, so I’m using that for comparison shopping.

If you ask me, Toyota’s model selector is pretty cool when you think about the main considerations people have when looking for a model to meet their needs…

The rest of Toyota.com has lots of “issues.”

Doh! I forgot the URL:

http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/modelselector/index.html

I don’t know wether you’re concerned with accessibility and standards, I am, in a reasonable way. I began scanning auto-makers websites on Lynx and it is not a pretty sight. I was appalled to see that renault.fr (Hello, I’m French by the way) turns out a blank page in Lynx. Their IE/Netscape page is not that hot either, all tucked-up in the top-left corner.
But they did drop the all Flash web page they used to have a few years ago, which is a good thing.

peugeot.fr and citroen.fr (our second and third car manufacturers, that are actually one corporation) are respectively totally unusable in Lynx and almost usable.

Looks like web issues aren’t just exclusive to this continent…
Browser compatibility should be a pretty big deal, if they want their sites to be accessible to everyone. Lynx is not the most popular browser though, so maybe they don’t know about it. If a site doesn’t load in Firefox, then they’ve got a lot of work to do…

This gets me thinking, there’s another segment with crappy webpages:
DEALERS. Small town/city dealer pages are god-awful. Good Lord. At least their search functions are usable but other than that, forget about it.

Good call on the dealers, Eric. Again, let’s look at VW for how to do it well (or at least better).

Here’s my local VW dealer’s page. Here’s the dealership in Anchorage, Alaska (where I am from).

Both look different, but pull design elements from VW. They pull the VW brand over, and they do it pretty well. I wonder if this is a requirement from VW? Anyone know?

Both the Ford and VW sites had a similar problem. I was trying to build a car, so I go to the page for that car (under Browse Models or equivalent) and click “Build.” So it goes to the build page for that car, but is missing some details I thought would be available.

On the VW home page, it says I can have a W8 Passat Wagon. But I try to build and can’t get that option. Ford says there is a Hybrid Escape. But I go to the Hybrid Escape page, hit build, and get options for 4 or 6 cylinder, no mention of hybrid. Can I not build these cars? Are they not on the market? What’s the deal? At least tell me when I get there, “Sorry, our Build A Car doesn’t support this model” etc.

You guys are so right, car company websites are horrendous! It’s like a contest to see how few browsers they can support.

My Audi A4 Cab is the most enjoyable car I’ve ever driven, but audiusa.com is an embarrassment. The main navigation doesn’t even work properly in Safari. Bleah!

Both look different, but pull design elements from VW. They pull the VW brand over, and they do it pretty well. I wonder if this is a requirement from VW? Anyone know?

Yes, I do believe this is a requirement from VW.

Many automotive corporations have strict compliancy guidelines that certified dealers must follow. Everything from logo dimensions and orientation, to color palettes and tints can be strictly enforced.

This is how the automotive corporations “brand” their product and ensure a common look/feel across their certified websites. Companies, like VW, release page after page of written and visual rules which must be strictly followed - and at first glance these rules are quite daunting.

In terms of marketing you can see why these guidelines are neccessary. However, in many cases these same guidelines can kill creativity, flexibility, and unfortunately in some cases - usability. If a specific section of the VW site is coded in a way which makes it unusable, but it is a requirement for VW dealerships to have on their site, suddenly instead of 1 poorly structured site you have 1000’s.

There is a domino effect of sorts and the automotive web industry, in my honest opinion, suffers greatly for it.

You didnﾂｴt check Audi and Mercedes-Benz. They have great sites. Plus Mixed-tape.

The Renault site has a feature that I absolutely hate; the dreaded click-and-it-takes-off dropdown.

You go to select your country, and if you accidently choose the wrong one, you’re reading French quicker than you can say “surrender”.

Hate that. Give me a list and a “Go” button.

ARGH!

Somehow, I don’t think very many drivers use Lynx.

Anyone know of any sites that let you do street customizations (i.e. rice rocket style)? I was told by a friend that there was such a site, but I haven’t found it.

re - the Scion site “viewpoint control” not working in Firefox…

It didn’t work for me in Firefox (1.5.0.9) initially, and when I clicked the link to install the plugin, it told me I have to be online to do that. (I’m connected to a LAN…)

So I viewed the page in IE, installed the plugin there, and after I did, refreshed the page in Firefox. Works as expected.

Some of the car dealer’s website is really not user friendly. It just look cool with all the flash and effect, but some information is hard to find….

Hey i’m a new user here and I just wanna post a question out in the open so I can hopefully get some answers if anyone is willing to help. I have a 1979 Datsun 200sx it only has 2700 orig. miles on it very good condition…. what can I get for it if I were to sell?