FREEDyourMind

Honda.com Has Best Auto Website

Automotive websites have a tough mission: they need to inspire brand loyalty and encourage sales and dealer visits without actually selling cars online, since most people will obviously buy a car in person.  Their mission is not unlike other brand-based websites that don’t conduct e-commerce, but the auto industry doesn’t seem to pay nearly as much attention to the web channel as the consumer-packaged good industry, for example, does.

Therefore, we’re launching the inaugural ForeSee Results Automotive Website Satisfaction Index, and we released our first set of findings today. Read about them in the Detroit Free Press or feel free to download a copy of the study from our website.

Here’s what we found: On the ACSI’s 100-point scale, Honda.com did best and NissanUSA.com did worst. The industry aggregate was 78. Individual automotive website scores are as follows:

    * Honda.com: 80
    * Chrysler.com: 79
    * FordVehicles.com: 79
    * Chevrolet.com: 77
    * Toyota.com: 77
    * NissanUSA.com: 76

The study also found that Honda.com does the best job leveraging the website to get visitors to buy a vehicle or visit a dealer. Chevrolet.com, FordVehicles.com, and NissanUSA.com were tied for being the least likely to influence customers to purchase a vehicle. Visitors to FordVehicles.com were the least likely to visit a dealer.

Considering the fact that top e-retailers like Amazon have scores in the high eighties, these guys still have a lot of work to do. However, it is impressive that Honda is doing such a great job leveraging their website to encourage dealer visits and sales.

The commentary has some specific usability examples that may be of interest.

ForeSee Results Acquires Red Spade

We’re thrilled to announce our first acquisition—a Chicago usability consulting firm called Red Spade that we had heard great things about from their clients like Best Buy, Borders, JC Penney, Lands End, Walgreens, and DTE Energy. ForeSee Results uses the methodology of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to help online businesses determine which areas of online improvement would have the greatest impact on satisfaction, likelihood to purchase, loyalty, word of mouth and ROI. By adding usability audits, we’ll be able to provide companies with specific prescriptive information based on usability best-practices about the changes they should make to increase satisfaction and influence customer behavior. The ACSI methodology will focus the usability audits so that companies don’t have the expense of a site-wide audit. Jennifer and Kay over at Red Spade are moving their office from Chicago to join us in Ann Arbor on October 1, and we can’t wait to integrate them into the team!