Tuesday, October 30, 2007

BMW Website Analysis - Mid Term Assignment

We have been given a mid term assignment which requires us to analyse the effectiveness of a particular Corporate web-site. We then have to compare the website with two other competitor sites.

We have chosen the BMW website (http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/homepage/) and decided to compare it against the Volkswagen website (http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/home) and the Chevrolet website (http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/).

Overall we found the BMW website performs well, however the build your dream car feature page was quite often slow to load and lacked functionality. It was easy to find your way around the website and is customer friendly. The website is well structured in its approach with appropriate sub headings.

We found a few errors on the website:
  • Back and forward arrows within the BMW site do not work properly. Especially on the “Build your dream car” section.
  • Back page function on Internet Explorer does not work properly on the BMW website.
  • No search tool provided on the website. The search tool is a basic function of any site and its surprise that it is not available on the BMW website.
  • The website has interactive features as it provides feedback options and press releases however a number of these features on the BMW website require specific browser settings in order to function correctly. To browse various areas of the BMW website, you must enable cookies.

I was quite disappointed with the visuals provided. The appearance of the website is geared towards traditional marketing techniques sticking to bold type faces, corporate colours and a very structured non-tangible approach.

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