B2B/B2C online strategy and enterprise eBusiness blog

If you watch Sunday night football (or any football, for that matter), you’ll be bombarded with plenty of commercials — especially automotive commercials. Since I’m a self-described “car guy,” I took interest in the Mercedes C-class commercials that have been airing recently touting the new styling and design “starting in the low $30’s.”

Little did I know that I was in for a frustrating experience when I visited the Mercedes website! This frustration carried over to BMWusa.com as well as Ford.com when I started comparing the BMW 300 series and the Ford Expeditions (the new car bug has bitten me since the smashing of the rear window of our SUV this past weekend).

The frustration with Mercedes’ website

I have historically owned American-made vehicles. Navigating a foreign car company’s website (even though it was the USA site) proved interesting as things are just a little “different.” The main frustration with Mercedes was lack of product descriptions with their models. Not being a previous Mercedes owner, I have no idea what the different classes are. Foreign vehicles tend to be named by their literal model names (i.e. C300 Sport Sedan, C300 Luxury Sedan, C350 Sport Sedan, and so on) vs. American vehicles which are typically named “real” names (i.e. Ford Expedition, Ford Mustang, Ford Escape).

Lack of comparison shopping
Model name nomenclature aside, what is most frustrating is the lack of comparison options for Mercedes. Even within the C-class, I am presented with 3 models, C300 Sport Sedan, C300 Luxury Sedan, and the C350 Sport Sedan. All 3 are sedans and two of them are “sports.” I was forced to specifically navigate each of the model pages and subsequent technical specs to fully understand the differences between the 3 models. This is a major no-no on websites — especially on sites trying to sell you an expensive automobile. While I’m making a large investment, I still expect comparison shopping tools be to available to me on a $30-$50k car as I would on a $200-$300 iPod. Nowhere was I able to see a side-by-side comparison of all of the options available on the various models to determine which model was right for me.

BMW suffers from the same “model overload”

BMW suffers from the same model vagueness as Mercedes, but is arguably worse. With 12 models within the “3 Series,” at this point, it is information overload. Again, not familiar with BMW at all, I have no idea what the difference is between the feature and benefits of all 12 models. Simple descriptions such as Coupe, Sedan, and Convertible help narrow it down, and since I’m interested in Sedans, this fortunately limits my choices down to only 4 models. But these 4 models are: 328i, 328xi, 335i, 335xi. As I later found, the “x” is for all-wheel-drive and is positioned as its own model, and not an option within a model, which I found to be non-consumer friendly. Again, the lack of side-by-side comparison shopping of the models forced me to spend extra time navigating the site to find the answers I needed.

Ford also lacks the necessary comparison tools, too

Ford too, despite its more obvious naming convention (i.e. Ford Expedition), suffers from the same model overload problem. There are 8 different Expedition models to choose from, ranging from starting prices of $30k all the way up to $42k.

While there is a comparison feature on the screen shot above, it is nowhere near comprehensive enough to understand the incremental differences between XLT, Eddie Bauer, Limited, and King Ranch. For years I have owned Fords, so I generally know the XLT is entry-level, but I don’t know what makes the Limited “worth” $3000 more than the Eddie Bauer.

Gaining a specific understanding and navigating further down the purchase funnel
Each of these sites suffer from comparison tools that prevent the consumer from gaining a specific understanding of options/features/benefits of models compared to one another. They suffer from the assumption that consumers are intimately familiar with the meanings of the various models simply by literal model names. For consumers just entering the segment, this is not the case. The C-class and 300-series models are generally entry-level Mercedes and BMWs, respectively, so they should particularly cater to the needs of an unfamiliar audience.

Does your site have the comparison tools consumers require?
With all of this said, it is important to take a look at your site, regardless of whether you’re selling online or not. If I were to visit a dealership, these subtle differences between car models can probably be easily explained by a salesman in a matter of seconds. This same information and selling assistance needs to be made available on a website, too.

Sony is closing the doors on its ImageStation online photo hosting product. This is an interesting move and makes me wonder exactly how much money they were losing on this venture. Quantcast has ImageStation.com ranked at #2,994 with an estimated 790,000 unique visitors per month. With the combination of products (coffee mugs, calendars, etc.), premium memberships, and traffic to the site, it’s amazing that they are completely shutting the service down.

ImageStation has been around for quite some time and was always one of the larger sites funded by deep-pocket companies that we (SuperMotors) had to look at for competition and feature comparisons. I guess when you’re up against the likes of Shutterfly (4M uniques/mo), KodakGallery (7M uniques/mo), and Photobucket (16M uniques/mo), at only 790K uniques/mo, you are in a very distant 4th place. Not to mention the other services out there that offer photo hosting.

David vs. Goliath
This presents an interesting challenge for significantly smaller sites like ours without the deep-pocket funding. Is this a sustainable business model? How do you capture market share against companies offering arguably similar services? For us, being a part-time venture, the biggest challenge is finding the time to add value to the site and continue to improve it. We are sitting on several months of work that has yet to be launched due to the commitments of each of our collective day jobs.

At the end of the day however, we offer a very niche service to automotive enthusiasts. While photo, audio, and video hosting remain the core of the features offered, the added bells and whistles that make us unique will always set us apart from larger sites like the ones mentioned above. They cater to the masses and as a result, have to be generic in nature of their service offering. We continue to add services and features to the site that specifically support the automotive enthusiast.

Still though, it would be nice to have a name like Sony or Kodak bankrolling the operation.

This case should be watched with great detail by internet retailers selling goods in the United States. While the class action lawsuit brought forth against Target makes claims that Target “failed and refused” to make its website accessible to the blind, it makes me wonder how many sites actually do consider disabled consumers during the development of a site.

Technologies like ajax and Flash create very usable experiences (when executed correctly!), but creating alternate methods of navigating and purchasing online without ajax or Flash presents an interesting challenge for internet retailers.

From the article:

The federation complaint alleges that Target.com lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that enables screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. The federation’s suit also alleges that Target.com has inaccessible image maps and other graphical features that prevent blind users from navigating and making use of all of the functions on the web site. Because the site requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers also are unable to make purchases on Target.com independently, the federation says.

Where lawsuits like this end? Will the Googles and Yahoo!s of the world be required to develop completely accessible applications to accommodate disabled persons? Where is the line drawn? On e-commerce sites? On highly-trafficked sites like Google Maps? Search?

Fortunately, for sites really well optimized for search engines, the underpinnings of an accessible site are already in place for disabled persons. However, advanced functionality (ajax, flash, etc.), while creating a trendy web 2.0 experience, still acts as a road block for search engines and thus disabled persons accessing sites through screen readers.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.