Non-Line Blogging

For the past 3 years I have been using the Ford web site as the benchmark for BAD registration forms, specifically the dreadful way that it managed the "Brochure Request" process.  So imagine my horror when I arrived at the site this week to find it had all changed...this could seriously damage my career as a consultant. 

But I should have known better.  Despite spending huge amounts of money on the shiny shiny new site most of the critical tasks that support car sales are still dreadful. Oh yes, the home page is fantastic - they must have spent a fortune on it. In these times of credit-crunchery I'd have thought it was time for Ford to get back to basics and make their site support processes that make the till ring - brochure requests and test drive appointments.  But oh dear, they seem to have forgotten to do that.

When I blogged about the aggregation of marginal gains last year (focus on doing 1000% things 1% better), I got this precient response from Avinash Kaushik.  He said:

This is a fantastic post!

Just yesterday I spoke to 2,400 people in the Auto industry and each and everyone of them was trying to move the ball by "1000%". Yet they have horrible landing pages for even the simplest of keyword searches and their paid search ads.

So there we have it.  Automotive marketers across the globe are spending bucketloads of money (they don't have) on the least important parts of their business process.  

So, just how bad can it be.  Let's pretend I want to get a brochure and, as I have owned 6 Fords in my life, we can assume my "reservoir of goodwill" (from Steve Krug )is filled to brimming as I approach the lovely new Ford site.

First up, what do we think of a home page that is 460K in weight?  To be fair, if the site is great then maybe you have to pack it with features, but this is a pretty big home page, according to the lovely web site optimisation site.  Here is the page size analysis for the shiny shiny new Ford site: 

And here is their report for the "Classic" Google homepage, perhaps the most successful page in web history:

So, the new Ford home page comes with a range of "health warnings" that are probably quick and easy to fix for a speedier (and maybe better) customer experience, again from web site optimisation  

• Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 132 which by their number will dominate web page delay. Consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Above 20 objects per page the overhead from dealing with the actual objects (description time and wait time) accounts for more than 80% of whole page latency
• Warning! The total number of images on this page is 115, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Recommend combining, replacing, and optimizing your graphics.
• Warning! The total size of this page is 466330 bytes, which will load in 119.34 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 100K to achieve sub 20 second response times on 56K connections.
• Warning! The total number of external script files on this page is 9, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Ideally you should have one (or even embed scripts for high-traffic pages) on your pages. 

But anyway, lets say that the page loads and I'm keen to press on with my brochure request.  The navigation has been tucked down in the bottom left hand corner but with a bold heart I click on the right link and come to a REALLY important page.  OK, it's had a lick of paint in the up-date but the page looks awkward, dull and out of keeping with the home page.  It's a few check boxes - where's the passion, the dream of owning a new car - Volkswagen show you pictures of cars - how nice is that?!

Worst of all Ford insists on restricting it's "soon to be customers" to only 2 brochure requests.  Given that the Ford car portfolio often has 3 or 4 cars that overlap a persons needs this has to be a mindless barrier to purchase.  Not only that, we now come face to face with the 1 million pound error message (follow the link to my prevoius post with all the maths) 

So, there we have it - site with a fantastic new home page and vritually no money invested in the key checkout processes that turn visitors into prospects.

So to Avinash's "horrible landing pages for even the simplest of keyword searches and their paid search ads" we can now add "horrible check-out processes".  With customers so thin on the ground shouldn't we all be trying to convert the faintest of nibbles on our site into qualified leads?