An Open Letter to @LINGsCARS
Dear Ling,
Although you may think that “#1 car leasing site in uk, £35m new cars sold in 2008″ is what defines a good website, unfortunately there is more to it than just sales. I’m not disputing the fact that you are extremely successful but you do need to consider usability and accessibility when developing your site.
After testing your site, Lingscars.com, with both the W3C Validator, and the WCAG Validator (used for accessibility) there are a lot of errors just with your site’s home page – these two systems combined determined a total of 594 errors. For something to be considered a good site – these errors should be minimal, but preferably non-existant. By no means am I saying that my site is the standard to go by, and I know there is usability and accessibility errors with it, but the difference is that mine is a personal blog and yours is an actual e-commerce site with actual customers.
Usability and accessibility becomes a big issue for those who are disabled – have you had many visually impaired people (who can still drive of course) try to use your website. If they use a screen reader, or try to find out what a certain image is, they won’t be able to know because you don’t use alternative text tags and include heaps of Flash components.
It is also really important for those people who are on low-bandwidth internet accounts – with all the images and videos you have on this site, people could be sitting there for hours, or days, waiting for these multimedia components to load on their computers. On the internet, there is a four-second rule – if a site doesn’t load or respond to feedback within four seconds, then people will log off. People who have bad experiences with sites, will never go back to them.
If you are asking why I am going into all of this detail about usability, the answer is that I also promote IT to high school students and that we needed to provide a site with bad usability to show students how not to develop a website. After going to the famous ‘Website that Suck’ site, your site was voted the third worst site of 2009, so I can assure you it is not just me who thinks the usability of your site needs improvement. But when I showed the kids, who were in year 10, your site – they asked me if it was a real site and not something that the university had made up to show bad websites.
If you compare your mobile phone site to your car site, you can actually feel more comfortable on the mobile site because you are absolutely not bombarded with pictures and movies when you go onto the site. I would ask you to maybe reconsider changing your car site a little bit to make it more like the mobile site. The same vibe of the site will be there, but it will not overpower the users when they access the site.
I also would ask you to consider undertaking usability testing on your car website. A quick search on Yell comes up with ProImpact7 but I am very sure that there are more out there that you can use.
By improving the usability of your site, you are more likely to have more repeat customers and would more than likely increase your overall revenues for 2009 and beyond.
If you would like to contact me, @ me on Twitter and we can discuss this further.
Kind Regards,
Jess Nichols
Filed under: Internet, Personal Branding, education | 39 Comments
Tags: accessibility, lingscars, response, twitter, usability
-
Flickr Photos
More Photos
Jess, as usual you completely miss the point about a successful business. You are obsessed with various web standards, technical errors, and accessibility for poor blind people without broadband.
Firstly, the “standards” are generally rubbish, they make little impact on any day to day web browsing. No one visits sites and asks about their W3C validation before buying. No one tests Amazon before they order a book. If the website displays in the browser and retains functionality, that’s fine. Standards are fine… but they are no holy grail, and do not earn you a penny.
Second, these “validation errors” mean nothing. They have no effect on Google rankings (indeed Google suggests sites are built for humans, not validators). Visitors are the first measure of success, and with over 110,000 every month, LINGsCARS has more than any other UK car leasing site.
That “visual impaired” argument is just daft. With every respect to blind people, which “visually impaired” driver do you know? I have had this argument with the RNIB and they can’t answer that, either. The truth is that virtually every other car leasing site only has about 10% of the information that LINGsCARS displays, and while (a very few) may comply with this silly requirement for blind people who thoretically want cars, the information they actually give is next to useless for anyone, sighted or not.
The broadband v dialup argument is just nuts. Who builds interactive websites for dial-up these days (just because there are a few legacy users with modems)? My customers are predominantly above-socially-average, credit-worthy, successful, proper people, in employment who own their house. I am not catering for a few people who a) don’t want to pay for broadband, or b) live in some weird area or Scottish island that can only get dial-up.
When you chunter on about usability, you completely miss the fact that I have a massive back-end site managing my customers (I very rarely deal with customers on the phone and uperate a fully-transcribed sales record with response times that are usually less than 10 minutes). You ignore that my customers all (universally) tell me the website usability and service is the best they have ever encountered (I have 1,350 letters published online describing this). Most competititor car sites have such a lack of *anything* on them, they are not database driven, the stock and prices are out of date and they present users with a final paper or pdf form. They may look “professional” but that is a veneer – they are useless.
Other car leasing businesses are NOT website businesses. They have large phone numbers, and scream “ring us”. I deal 95% online through the whole transaction through to delivery. Some customers never actually talk to me using their voice. No other car company in the UK (or world) can do this.
My website supports 10 UK jobs. It supplied £35 million of new cars in 2008, and frankly unless you can show me YOUR effort of creating a site which is one tenth as successful, Jess, then why on earth should I listen to you… with your “expert” opinions? How dare you presume to know better, firing off a few tired and pointless criticisms? Same old, same old.
Every year I pay more and more tax and contribute more to the UK economy than 99% of people who will read this blog, and all is generated from LINGsCARS. My mobile site is a minnow by comparison. Cars are where my heart is. Who else, as a totally independent non-franchised (and frankly female and ethnic individual) can manage to move £35 million of car stock in the UK? No one, that’s who. That I can do that ENTIRELY from this website is something you should take into account before you start whinging.
Frankly, I do not care if I miss some technically perfect mas-turbatory IT-nerd benchmark. My website works, the service is the best, it generates a large income, sustains a few jobs, enchants customers and provides excellent service, far better than any other car leasing service or car dealer website. It keeps customers happy for 2-years BEFORE they take a car from me, and for 2 or 3-years afterwards.
I provide industry busting prices and service and seem to create many vocal critics (despite having better service than anyone else). Join the website moaning minnie queue, Jess Nichols.
Ling Valentine
LINGsCARS.com
Ling,
I apologise if you feel my comment was a direct attack. It was never my intention. As evident by my statement “I’m not disputing the fact that you are extremely successful”. All I was merely doing was trying to constructively analyse the site and provide food for thought on how you could improve it. I have published other articles relating to specific brands in previous blog posts, so I have not set out to make you an example.
Functionality and Usability are very different things. Functionality is what you site can do, and usability is the ease that people can use the functionality on the site. You have achieved a great deal of functionality within your site, but I see usability as being an issue. This is not confined to your site – it is a common issue for majority of the sites published on the Internet. I was not trying to compare your functionality with those of other car rental services and did not refer to competitor brands within my post. I have never stated that I am an expert in my field – I am still only a student, as you can see from my ‘About Me’ section, and so I have never stated, nor will state, that I am an expert at anything just yet.
You are right in regards to people not checking W3C standards when they go to websites, but usability is still a key component, and usability is becoming a bigger issue nowadays. Based on your success it is fair to guess that your current target market and user-base are tolerant and accepting of the usability of your site due to the rich functionality and services that you provide. There are some users who will sacrifice usability to ensure a high level of functionality – as you have noted, your site is highly ranked and is able to move “£35 million of car stock in the UK”. But at the same time there will be users out there who may be intimidated by the site, and may go to another site that appears more user friendly from their first impressions.
At the end of the day, this is only the advice of one individual on the whole internet. If you don’t see it contributing any business added value to your company, disregard what I have posted. If not, I still stand by my previous statement that if you would like to contact me, I am happy to discuss it further.
Of course, I accept some people will be turned on and some will be turned off by my site. It is my intention to create some polarisation in visitors. “I hate it!” “I love it”.
What the big problem with your arguments is, that to achieve your perfect usability, a website slides down into some averageness that offends no one, but inspires no one at the same time.
I need to create emotional attachment, which is a hard thing if you are pleasing everyone.
Take restaurants. As “usability” of restaurants increases, to include all types of people (ie a big net of customers) the restaurant inevitably becomes more mediocre like most chains and in the end like many chain restaurants, ends up doing an average job, offending few but also inspiring no one.
I do not want *every* new car customer in the UK. Just 1% would be very nice, but I am far off that. I don’t want to aim for *every* customer. To do so would mean that my website emotion would deteriorate to some watery acceptable standard. In other words, for a group of people to say “that bit’s remarkable”, you MUST have another group who say “I hate that bit”.
Just as some people love Apple Macs and another group hate them. Or some people like Marmite and others hate it.
In real life, when you go shopping, most people want different experiences, not repeated average standard experiences. Yes, some customers will be discarded, but then not everyone wants a Mac either.
Like with cars, when some cars are more individual you find people love and hate them, whereas the more average or boring cars are, the less the emotional attachment. If you want just an acceptable car, try a Proton. They are very usable, no effort to own, they should sell thousands. Instead they sell about 50 a month in the UK.
Now, in this business there is a VERY LONG lead time on new cars. Customers and visitors are likely to want a car within the next 3-years, not straight away. That’s why I need to entertain (or opposite- offend) them so that (say) I retail 50% for the next 2 years until they want a car. Even when they order a car, the factory build may be 3 months away. I need to hold their interest.
Most websites cater for the here and now, and that is where you are going wrong. Who wants a car TODAY? Very few people. This is not an impulse purchase with immediate delivery. I need to submerge people in loads of info and keep them interested and emotionally attached. I need to burn my website into their brains so that when they need a new car they will remember it. Who would remember a (just) acceptable, average website?
If you think anyone does this better (with cars) feel free to look around. Tell me which car dealers with their massive resources do it better. Tell me which leasing brokers do it better. You can be so “professional” and bore people to death with a very usable plain form and response site fully validated and quite perfect in usability, but a car is a very emotional, long, slow and massive purchase.
Do you gettit yet? I still say if anyone can do it better and show me the results, feel free to try!
I am not selling reams of A4 paper or computer cables. I need emotion to sell new cars and overcome the massive competition of franchised car suppliers.
Like I say, my site should not work, but it does. Because my customers are human, I guess.
Ling
LINGsCARS
Jess,
you have completely missed the point and clearly never leased a car from Ling.
I agree the site is completely bonkers but the customer service is second to none. When somebody I know needs a car I’ll send them there ( I do have to warn them about the site to be fair). This make up for any customer that was ‘intimidated’ by the crazy site.
infiniteloop,
I think you have completely missed the point of this post, but have clearly leased a car from Ling.
What Jess is trying to get at is the USABILITY of the site, not the FUNCTIONALITY or the CUSTOMER SERVICE aspects. I am sure Ling completely dominates in these fields, which is the reason why her service is #1 in the UK, and why customers such as yourself, praise her website “the customer service is second to none”.
What I do find amusing is that you, yourself, agree that the “site is completely bonkers” (please refer here –> http://bit.ly/3ASOl) and that you “had to warn them about the site to be fair”. Isn’t this the whole point of usability? You wouldn’t need to have to do this if the site was more USABLE.
Keep the FUNCTIONALITY.
Keep the amazing CUSTOMER SERVICE.
This is working a charm. Ling obviously has the right formula going here, and I congratulate her on it! The service she is providing is extremely impressive.
What this whole discussion boils down to is one aspect, an aspect that both you and Jess have referred to, i.e. the usability of the site.
Agree with Jordan.
Also, I think it’s pretty silly to say that increasing the usability of a site leads to it sliding into averageness and not inspiring.
And comparing the site to Apple?! Haha, not so muchy.
Just want to point out, a site doesn’t need to be “completely bonkers” to achieve the “emotional attachment” Ling talks about. You can achieve a unique customer experience whilst still incorporating good website design and usability.
“Visitors are the first measure of success, and with over 110,000 every month, LINGsCARS has more than any other UK car leasing site.”
I have to disagree here – visitors are definitely not the first measure of success – especially on the web. What is more important is how many of those visitors actually go to Lingscars.com in the end to lease a car. It’s important to look at where those visitors are coming from as well, are they arriving from sites like http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/? In that case they aren’t potential customers, they are just visiting the site to see the design that is being critiqued. If they are coming from search engines in search of a rental car, then the site’s achieving its goals there – as long as some customers actually do decide to use Ling’s service. It sounds like Ling is going great, so maybe it is a mix between the search engine results and positive word of mouth feedback about her customer service?
If Ling does have brilliant customer service, imagine the customers she would gain through an easier to use website design? It doesn’t have to be plain and professional, it can still have that quirkiness but in a simpler to use design. Ling definitely has established a brand identity in her own unique way which is great, I’d love to see it transferred across to her site in a nicer design. Most car rental sites do go for that plain professional look, Ling has had the foresight to see that being different and straying from that produces results!
It sounds like Ling knows what she is doing in terms of car rentals but visiting her site before reading her response on here, I got the impression the site was not trustworthy. Especially on the web with online transactions (I’m aware the site has Comodo security), a site which looks like Ling’s scares a lot of people away as the front end doesn’t match what might be a strong design on the back end. I must say, I also had difficulties with the site… http://www.lingscars.com/lease-hire.php made my computer lag like crazy even with ADSL2+ and only iTunes running in the background.
Ling, how a business reacts to criticism is just as important as how they react to positive feedback. Jess sounds like she was only trying to help.
Either way, I’d say Jess has a fair point about usability and Ling has a fair point about wanting to stand out. I think both can be achieved.
LING SHOOTS CAR LEASING PRICES FOR BREAKFAST!!!!
Well, I struggle to find one UK site in the same sort of area as mine with better #wiggles-fingers# usability #wiggles-fingers# . Because to use something, doesn’t that kind of mean it has to do something useful? And that includs just about every car dealer and broker site in the UK.
And it’s so hard to find another car leasing site with any reasonable collection of dynamic (meaning up to date and current) offers that can be interrogated, where you can find a price list of over 2000 cars and where the #wiggles-fingers# use #wiggles-fingers# of the site is greater than any other, or where you can do everything online in a 100% secure environment (fully secure and EV).
It’s making me feel a bit uncomfortable to slapping this blatant stuff around like a dead trout (really yes) because it seems so obvious to me. It’s like when people rated the #wiggles-fingers# usability #wiggles-fingers# of the stupid Segway… but it won’t go up steps. Usability simply means it works with a certain ease. I think I can prove mine works. It should not always be easy, sometimes you need to place challenges in customers’ ways in order to make sure they are serious about their commitment.
Look: a website does not have to fit conventional rules. You can do what you want. There are no laws, real or imagined about how it needs to work. The format is still immature and the concept is still evolving.
So for heaven’s sake, open your minds and try different stuff. If it works, it works! Stop pretending there are “usability” and “funtionality” rules. You are just making these up, there a made-up concept. It’s like a TV programme or radio format, or art, or films or shop designs… people can dream up new ones all the time. The best are not always the easiest to read, watch, taste, understand or appreciate. “Easy” is not the best word in the world.
It’s always the people who have not created a successful website who are the biggest critics. You need to open your minds and hearts!
Oh, and if you wonder about LINGsCARS and Apple.com in the same sentence, hahaha, muchy muchy (as you say). Look at “Retail Week”: http://www.lingscars.com/news.php#retailweek
I’m not suggesting there is no room for improvement, but stop trying to squeeze me into a cardboard box just because most websites have about as much emotion as a cardboard box.
Ling
LINGsCARS
I wasn’t wondering about LINGsCARS and Apple.com in the same sentence. I was wondering about LINGsCARS and Apple products, specifically, Macs, which you mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability
Jess makes a valid argument concerning usability. One idea might be that Ling’s website is her business ‘Purple Cow’ and may attract more traffic then just having a good clean but run of the mill website. The image the website portrays may not be a professional one but that is different.
Some companies such as Australian Computing Retailer MSY run poorly designed and low usability websites http://www.msy.com.au/. While they could in theory easily make a highly usable website the fact that there website looks cheap reinforces the ideal that MSY parts are cheap and the website reflects this. So one could call this a business decision to have a cheap looking website. Ling may be working under this strategy.
Firstly I would like to say to Jess, read this first http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/78913/article.html
@Ling: just like Jess and all the others that have commented. I congratulate you and respect you for adopting functionality and pricing that has not been seen before in the automative industry.
However you either reject the idea of usability as if it is a constraint on progress or you don’t really understand the importance of it. So let me relate this to something that you might understand. You mention that “If it works, it works”. My dad recently purchased a new touchscreen based GPS, Radio, DVD player Head unit for our old car. It has bluetooth, iPod connectivity, and rear parking camera with InfraRed LED’s for night parking. All these functions work.
However when operating the touch screen the driver is forced to look away from the road and look at the screen which is obviously a safety hazard. In fact I loathe driving that car now as the radio unit is so hard to use. The rear parking camera and the LED’s are enclosed behind glass to prevent rocks, dirt, etc from damaging the camera. However when parking at night, the glass reflects the light from the LED’s back into the camera lense and the camera _loses_ all functionality.
You provide evidence based on media articles and your own statistics that your site is popular which I agree with wholeheartedly. It is clear that your outlandish and unexpected marketing strategies work. Like I mentioned, while you are trying to differentiate yourself from current car salespeople, by providing _excellent_ customer support and pricing.
However it seems that the bright lights and garish colours are no different from the flailing-arm statues, giant stickers and the four-square techniques of “dodgy car salespeople”. Like Patrick I would also personally have to think it over a few times before I would even consider giving you my money.
Another point about accessibility. Obviously visually-impaired people are not going to drive a car, however, they are going to be passengers and buyers. You have been quick to adopt functions, like live chat, twitter and e-mail support. So if you want to be on the leading edge of technology and customer support, it seems obvious to take steps to increase the accessibility of your site.
Ling,
I agree with you in that it is difficult to find “one UK site in the same sort of area as mine with better usability”. This, I see as a weak excuse to just not do anything with your site and for this, my dear, I must say: #wiggles-fingers# Bad Girl. #wiggles-fingers# Usability may be a monetary cost you have to absorb, but it is a short term cost, compared to the long-term costs of the number of potential customers turned away due to how bonkers the site looks.
You’ve portrayed yourself to be an individual so concerned with providing the best service to your CUSTOMERS. Therefore, it is important that you engage in a process of continuous improvement to continuously BETTER SERVE your customers. It’s about delivering your online CONTENT & FUNCTIONALITY in a manner such that there is MINIMAL EFFORT by the user, to give them an experience that is pleasant (and hopefully memorable). This is usability.
What I have noticed is that differing interpretations on the term USE/USABILITY/USABLE exist…and fair enough…today it is a rather generic term. But within the online context and the generally accepted standards today, Jess’ definition still stands. “Functionality is what you site can do, and usability is the ease that people can use the functionality on the site.”
Let me use your example of the Segway to help clarify this.
The Segway is very easy to use. There is minimal effort required to learn and pick up and operate the Segway. To express it in plain English…the Segway is…wait for it…USABLE. The fact that it “won’t go up steps”, as you stated, is a reference to the (lack of) FUNCTIONALITY in the Segway. It can’t do something (function)…but it’s still usable.
No one is saying that your website is completely NON-USABLE. It is evident that your site is partially usable, by the fact that the site is converting clicks into sales. Also, as stated earlier, it is fair to say that your current target market and user-base are tolerant and accepting of the usability of your site due to the rich functionality and services that you provide. What is important for you to recognise is that what is being said is the current level of usability can be IMPROVED, in the best interest of your USERS. That’s all. It’s about improving the customer service one more notch.
I also do find it amazing that you are saying that we have made up the usability and functionality rules, when you so specifically mentioned earlier that the W3C existed. We’re not making this up. Organisations exist for these standards. Research has been done to show that improved usability leads to better user experience which leads to returning users, or potentially more sales.
The fact of whether we have opened a successful website is irrelevant to this topic. Framing us as being jealous of your success and therefore criticising you in completely irrelevant (and dare I say immature). As a leader of your company, and given the maturity of the internet and social media, it is important for you to open your mind and heart to this subject matter. These are the voice of the users of your website. Please. Listen.
You should have noticed not once have we critiqued your service and functionality offered. Why? Because you’re doing a great job at that. This is why people are coming to you. All we are saying is to improve the interface between your service and your customers…i.e. the usability of your website.
TAKE LEASE DELIVERY, LIKE CHINESE TAKEAWAY!!!
This case is very similar to another “Websites that suck” Winner (or loser I guess) called MSY (http://www.msy.com.au). While the website is extremely unusable, unfriendly and confusing, their prices are SO DAMN cheap that you tend to ignore it.
As a User Interface/User Experience designer I agree with everything that Jess and c0up and Jordan are saying, however there is something to be said about the fact that Ling can have such a supportive userbase, cheap prices and from what everyone is saying, amazing customer service… even with such a confusing site.
If you really think about what you would prefer… a good user experience and usability at the expense of customer service and price? I know what I would choose!!!! *I just hope that none of the other UI/UX guys at work see this…
That being said, have good usability AND awesome customer service/price would be awesome
I guess one major difference between Ling’s site and MSY is that Ling’s site is transactional, and seemingly does a pretty good job of keeping stock up to date, etc, where MSY just links to those PDFs, and you inevitably have to go in store to get anything done.
I mentioned MSY above.
One interesting thing to look at is something like a linux shell. While to the average user the usability is very low. Once they learn all the commands it can become a much more quick and efficient method of performing tasks compared to having a high usability UI
Hey Ling, clearly you don’t know much about computers so here’s a tip: there’s already a key for #wiggles-fingers#, it’s next to Enter. Looks like this: “.
While your site is obviously successful, has it not occured to you that cleaning it up a bit might help it achieve even greater success? I understand that you want to retain the DIY look because that seperates you from all the other boring, stock-photo filled pages on the internet, but you could surely do that in a much neater way. While it’s all well and good to assault the user with how different your company is, it makes it really difficult to actually find anything useful – your site is only saved because it has that reasonably usable sidebar with a list of cars. You seem to have an idea that usability is the opposite of personality, and it’s just not the case.
Given that you’ve managed to take out time from your business to write two lengthy replies to an anonymous blogger, you’re clearly pretty sensitive about this – presumably you cop a lot of flak for your site design. Perhaps you should consider what they’re saying?
Also, a Harley Davidson is most certainly not a superbike.
Yeee-ow!
Well, in my book a 1600cc Harley certainly is a superbike.
There you go again, like the others, pretending “rules” exist for things where no rules exist. Bikes now. …All these web-standards rules are to a large-part …nonsense. Google points this out. The big question is : Does the website work cross-platform in all browsers, for humans?
One thing that ruins many websites is NOT that they don’t comply with made up standards, but the IE/Open Standards Browser problems.
How hard can it be for people to find a car on my site and press “order now”? I am amazed that people find usability a problem. I encourage loadsa communication from my site; I have a comments page, a moan page, my live chat, clear email, a phone number and a full postal address. Yet, I do not get communication asking me how to order or find cars, or how to use the site. Amazing. Out of 100,000 visitors a month, perhaps you will all suggest these disappointed ones just go away. Well,I don’t think so, a car is a big thing, I think they would … ask.
My website really is quite easy to use, however, just because it does not meet all your (plural) ingrained ideas of what a website *should* be like you think it’s difficult. It’s not. How hard can it be to click on a car?
You can only truly judge if you actually want a car (and have visited other sites with their “professional” but old and useless info and generic corporate-speak), and even then, bear in mind that I attempt to filter out customers who will be too “stiff”. I need customers who share a certain attitude, as car supply in the UK is not as straightforward and there are many hoops to jump through. It can take between 3 weeks and 6-months to get a car, so my customers are entering into a lengthy partnership with me. We need trust built up. Here’s a blog from one current customer who has been waiting 6-months for his car (due to slow factory production) http://www.white-space.co.uk/stuff_we_like
Ling
LINGsCARS
Hi Ling,
I think your missing the point. I believe that Jess was simply suggesting that in order to take your success to the next level you need to have a website that does your customer service some justice.
It’s true a website’s attractiveness depends on each individual, but why take the risk of losing one customer when you can minimise that by having a website that reflects your customer values?
Having a “messy” website doesn’t filter out people the customers you do not want to do business with. Sure it may be “easy” to use your website but again like the attractiveness of the website, it differs from person to person. A website can have personality without being confusing.
I think it’s great that Jess took the time to even consider giving you suggestions as to how you can improve your website. As a business person you should always look at ways you can improve your service and improve the means of communicating with your target audience.
Just consider that you may be filtering consumers that may benefit your business in the long run. You can still achieve many of the things you have argued by having a user-friendly website. Think of it as upgrading and further differentiating your website from others and catering for a greater audience.
=]
That is all.
Afraid that although the various points of view may be interesting.
In my experience IT pros are the least qualified group to give an opinion on a website.
I much prefer to have the opinion of the General Public who in the main would have no idea what your rambling on about,and care even less.
Hmm, I would disagree with that.
The General Public have proved themselves to be buffoons again and again. How many home pages are set to ninemsn or yahoo? Appalling websites that define syndicated blogspam.
I find that sites that aren’t aimed at the GP are generally made better. Reddit, Digg (about 2 years ago), /., etc. You can assume more about your audience, and tailor it to their needs.
Regarding Ling, I think a lot of your arguments make sense. But they’re mostly in the vein of ‘don’t fix what hasn’t broken’.
Maybe my internet is being a tad slow, but your website loads very slowly compared to any other tab I have open.
Unlike most of the other people here, I am no usability expert. In fact even my HTML is poor, so I can provide some General Public opinion that Alvin mentioned. To me, the site is navigable, but only because you have pictures of cars to look at. And these cars are only suitable anchor points because they’re in a nice grid format, and happen to be the main focus of the page.
Your website reminds me of geocities site from 2000. It has some kitsch appeal, but it’s slow and slightly difficult to Ctrl-F through. Even though the information is pretty sparse. It’s different from other websites in that you’ve tried to do the cute ‘i did this in mspaint’ style, and added youtube videos etc.
The point that everyone is making is essentially this (i think):
If a business came along with the same service and value as yours, but with greater general usability guidelines implemented, how would you fare?
Haichen
The General Public have proved themselves to be buffoons
Have you some evidence to back this statement up.?
My experience is that the general public ,although not all being masters of cyberspace are very astute about what and where they make a purchase.
The most important thing for a website IMHO is to present the product in the best light at the best price and make sure its as easy as hell to purchase it.
all else is dross IMHO.
It’s really hard to reply to all these points without seeming to be clever about it… but I must say that a really valid point is that everyone seems to be an expert, but surprisingly then most people don’t practise what they preach (ie. create a massively “useable” site, themselves). If everyone is so better equipped to do it better, why not do it?
If anyone has any concept about how much work and effort has gone into this (my database has over 280 tables), then any re-working will be seen as a £50,000 adventure in website rebuilding terms.
The mistake most people make is STILL that you (plural) presume some immediate sale. This does not happen. Also, I do not want *every* customer. This is also a mistake, aiming to appeal to everyone. Often this does not maximise sales, it simply dilutes the offering to a lowest-denominator.
Buying or leasing cars is a very long-term and massive proposition, few websites have to deal with this. What other website can you think of that completes online business which over the 2 or 3 years of a customer’s time-to-market has to hold their attention, create repeated re-visits, give them loads of goodies (hence all the easter eggs) and basically keep them pumped up until they can eventually apply for a car?
Sorry to go on, but this is not about typical visit-click-buy-click-deliver website traffic.
Ling,
How many viewers of your site are repeat viewers? How many of your viewers end up as a customer, and how many just laugh at it?
Your site may be functional, but it is not usable. It does not appear to follow any standards. Web browsers, the applications that people use to browse your ‘fantastic’ site, follow these standard to interpret the coding behind it. As well as the 500+ HTML errors mentioned by jessnichols, there are also 16 CSS errors and over 180 CSS warnings. These errors result in viewing errors and reduced usability. Have a look at the hompage in Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5, and scroll all the way down.
The site is also not very friendly on a broadband internet connection. On a 20Mbit cable internet connection, the homepage of your website takes 43 seconds to load.
You say on the security page of your website: “I am appalled
by the way most car finance companies and car dealers exchange information with their customers via completely insecure email and fax. Any fool or scammer can intercept it.” Any fool or scammer can now intercept SSL traffic through a tool that came out of Black Hat this year, SSLStrip by Moxy Merlinspike (http://www.thoughtcrime.org). For pages which link or POST to a HTTPS page, the fool/scammer/’hacker’ makes the SSL connection to your servers, then returns the HTTP page back to the customer. SSLStrip can even give your page a favicon of a lock.
Comment on the McAfee Siteadvisor page:
“seen the website advertised on ITV Tyne Tees (North East version) the website seems safe but the website is a but of a mess the home page has way to much stuff on it which does make it look ugly.”
Whilst websites like MSY (http://msy.com.au/) may look ugly, like a Year 7 students armed with Microsoft Word, your website looks like it’s taken the top 100 things not to put in a website, and put them there. Is the animation of you going up and down your logo really neccesary? Do we need to google spider food, when we’re just looking for a car?
Whilst I’m sure that your website has a great and functional backend, the frontend makes the biggest impact on the customer. With all those profits, hire any Web Designer worth their salt. There’s a huge difference between “easy to use” and “completely atrocious” – they represent completely different areas of web design.
This is what happens when any idiot can put up a site on the internet. I feel there should be some approval board so I dont hurt my eyes on terrible websites such as this one.
Psychosis,
No, no, no you miss the point – AGAIN.
“Do we need to google spider food, when we’re just looking for a car?”
Most people are *NOT* looking for a car! The time you decide to change a (new) car is very infrequent. I am concerned with interacting with people for the 2, 3 or 4 years BETWEEN people changing their car.
Browsers work fine with my site, all that standards stuff is rubbish. Loading time might not be instant, but good things rarely are instant
Once again, if “any idiot” can do this, why don’t YOU get on with it? And when people call for regulation, you should be careful. There are 1,000′s of identikit-bad useless sites who have spent £5k on skinning the front end… but then they actually DO nothing.
My site is (and no one but customers see this) 250 customers entertained, communicated with in a fully transcribed back-end, better than ANYTHING else in the UK motor industry, perhaps the world. No customer goes more than 3 days without a chat, we have fun, some people remain in there 6 months waiting for their cars to be built.
Do you ever wonder why no other sites publish 1,350 testimonials (fully attributed and replied to by me)? Because they don’t have the endorsements, that’s why.
Guess “any idiot” could get those testimonials?
Thanks for the reply despite my incendiary tone
.
Most important thing first – a superbike is a sports bike with 750-1000cc displacement for 4 cylinders, and 850-1200ccs for twins and triples. This is a real rule.
Though a Harley doesn’t count in even a conventional sense because they’re as slow as a wet week. Takes a lot of torque to carry all that chrome and a fat old accountant with a fake beard.
… anyway
When you ask “How hard can it be for people to find a car on my site and press “order now”?”, the answer is “significantly harder than it needs to be”. I get that the site is personal, generates discussion, stands out and so on. In all honesty it’s a marketing tour de force. But the truth remains that the way it’s set up makes it harder for the user to actually get information and order cars – you’re sacrificing usability for appeal. Clearly it’s working for you, but it doesn’t make Jess’ points any less valid. I personally can’t help but wonder if a happier balance can be achieved between the two.
Out of interest, if other car suppliers with more usable cookie-cutter sites mirrored your functionality (with the backend you mention and so on), could you see yourself competing as effectively?
Gertrude, they can’t mirror it.
No other car company puts IT as high on the priority list as I do. For example, it has taken me 3 years to persuade ANY supplier to produce an xml feed, and I currently have just 2 incomplete ones (of incoming offers). The rest come in on excel, Word, even on handwritten fax. That’s as good as the UK car industry gets with IT, and they think excelis the dogs bollocks. That’s why the general results on other websites are so poor (because the raw info and data is so bad). It takes me ages to get this prehistoric data uploaded.
Today, to give you example, I have re-done my home page to reflect a 1-year offer with me tied up on the roof of a car, have uploaded two large spreadsheets worth of Citroens and Volvos, added an “immediate delivery” tag to my cars (as this becomes a real selling point in these long lead-time times). I have created a GAP insurance page and set some email marketing going.
No other car company can manage this, because they do not have their focus online.
Today, *so far* I have had 14 bespoke quote requests, 238 incoming customer LINGO messages (LINGO is my secure comms system) which were replied in average 4 minutes 44 seconds, I have delivered 6 cars to the end user, had 5 new signed orders and new 13 car proposals. Up to now (10.30PM) I’ve had 3186 website visitors today, 66,000 this month, and currently there are 22 visitors on my website, 3 of which are customers.
You see, I tell you this because no other car company could even quantify this stuff, never mind summarise it. Never mind while they are sitting at home watching Red Oktober and drinking wine (hic). In maybe 2 weeks, these other car companies may produce some management report for a board meeting and discuss “tweaking” their web page and discuss some historic stats. They are all traditional companies, with an advertising website attached. They hammer telephones.
So while my website isn’t perfect, it is 1,000% better than any other car site and does the job well, considering it was built (basically) by me for peanuts and God knows how it manages to work, frankly, there are so many work-arounds and fixes and then fixes for the fixes.
So, stop telling me to rebuild it. No one has any idea of the scale of the coding challenge. I have a brand new (proper css based) framework nearly built which will power LINGsCARS Mk2.
Hope that will satisfy everyone who offers helpful advice, as my new site will be much more configurable and changeable without breaking stuff. I can also create clone sites, eg: a 4×4 site, or a “sensible” site. There still remains the question of how ANY changes would affect my excellent Google rankings.
Ling
I’m just fascinated by the ideas that this conversation has brought up with regards to usability and its relationship to online success.
Truthfully, when I first landed on Ling’s website I felt like someone was poking a needle in my eye – but then, I’m a designer and I eat sexy websites for breakfast so I’m probably not the person to be making a non-bias opinion.
However after taking some time to look through it I found that it was, surprisingly, fairly easy to navigate around – albeit a little “noisy”, however not disruptively so.
I believe that one of the reasons Ling’s website appears to succeed is due to the personality Ling attributes to the website via the quirky comments, “moan” sections, and an edgy and fun approach to doing business. Another reason is the functionality of the site, of which there seems to be a consensus that it excels in delivering the functionality customers need.
I believe Jess was using Ling’s website purely as a surface-level illustration of design that cannot be considered to pass usability tests, which is something – I know, as a designer – is sadly neglected in many young designers. Jess was obviously not taking into account Ling’s complete online operations and was not making a value-judgement of Ling’s business success.
I do have one bone to pick, however.
Ling, to say that there are “no rules” in web design is, while technically true as there are no legal bodies governing the Internet, it is sadly misjudging the long-term benefits of establishing standard practice in digital publication. (To clarify, we’re talking about a GENERAL web design issue here, not your website in particular.)
Standards do have an impact on a user’s experience. See –> http://bit.ly/6fY6YW
Take programming as an example. There’s more than one way to write a piece of software. If there were no standards, such as outlined by the Object-Oriented approach which highlights code re-use, then software houses would waste a fortune fixing bad code that was written by programmers who wanted to churn out code fast rather than abide by standards. Web standards are not just for users. They’re for the designers and programmers too, to help keep the project clean, ordered, and extendable.
That said, I love your “outside-the-box” approach to your website. I think it’s bold, slightly crazy, but intriguingly provocative of free-thought amongst designers, which is never a bad thing.
Bravo on your success, but let’s remember the web is yet to reach maturity in its development and the practices we promote now will enrich the quality of work we see on the web in the future.
Daniel, apologies for not replying sooner, I was waiting to see if there were more comments.
I almost completely agree with you, especially that we are dealing with a very immature thing (the web). I must say that people who suggest THIS or THAT is “correct” may look back in 10 years and feel slightly silly. Frankly you can do anything you want, and who knows… it may work?
Really we all need to push boundaries as who knows where development will take things. Thanks very much for that great post!
Ling
LINGsCARS
Ling,
We’re supposed to be pushing *forwards*.
Ling, there is always a new way of doing things, but not necessarily in the way that you have envisioned. After a quick search on Google finds that your site has continually come up in the ugliest websites. Here’s a few examples:
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/top-10-worst-websites/
http://www.ninja-nerd.com/website-atrocity-things-you-should-never-do-to-your-web-site/
http://www.mad4mobilephones.com/are-these-the-12-ugliest-websites-in-the-world/755/
http://www.omfgthissucks.com/great-with-cars-bad-with-design
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ (found on the front page)
http://www.manolith.com/2009/08/25/worst-website-designs/
http://www.pleonast.com/groups/designers/entries/516580-worst-car-site-ever
Remember, like my comments in the original post, it’s all about the face value/usability and not the functionality. No one has a major issue with the functionality, it’s all about how it’s designed.
Like I said in my other post – this is advice, and there are some people here (excluding Ling and Alvin) that do have a lot of experience within the web sphere and how sites should look. If you don’t want to take the advice that is being provided to you in a constructive manner, then don’t but please don’t start saying that we don’t know what we’re doing.
The internet turned 40 just this year, and of course there are a lot of changes that have happened and you are right, styles may change in the next ten years – but usability will always be there. Usability is the interface between humans and technology and if that isn’t working then they won’t be able to use the website.
You can push boundaries and still have a usable site. If you look at usability articles on the internet, then you will see that most of the ways to implement better usability are quite simple and won’t remove the ‘vibe’ of your website.
Jess,
You DON’T know what you are doing… why? : because you haven’t done it! You are just trotting out other people’s conventions.
Your certain/definite views are is criticising and “correcting” people who HAVE done it, whereas with all your expert opinion, you have not created a single successful transactional website, yourself (ie one that is reasonably profitable).
You are a classic “expert” who has never walked the walk, never putting your own neck on the line – just commenting about others. And many people swallow your “wisdom”.
As for your assertion that the internet is 40 years old, well, I wonder how many websites there were in 1969? Exactly. None.
Or in 1979, or in 1989. You are talking about pre-tcp/ip university/military networks.
Windows didn’t even have a workable browser in 1995!
There were a reasonable number of websites in 1999, but then, even Google wasn’t around. We had idiots like Boo.com blowing £millions on rubbish.
If you *KNOW* what you are talking about, for goodness sake put it into practise! Show us what a successful transactional selling site you can build and run. But you don’t. You just go on about theory.
As for those sites which suggest mine is ugly: fine. Let them. Great, they vreat traffic. At least they talk about my site! So what if my website is ugly? Some of the most successful things are ugly. The VW Beetle was ugly, the Apache helicopter is ugly. A lot of art is ugly. A cockroach is ugly. A lot of brilliant people are ugly.
Since when has UGLY got anything to do with anything? Is this the age of vanity talking?
When you say a lot of people here have experience of how sites *SHOULD* look, who is writing the rules about websites that these people trot out? Who is saying what should and what should-not be allowed? Are your pals here web policemen, or web magistrates? Or are they web art-critics?
If everyone played by the made-up “rules” that you defend, nothing new, ground-breaking or inspirational would be built. Before YouTube, YouTube would have broken the rules.
Before Google, Google would have broken the “rules” about how search engines should look and work.
Jess, you are good at trotting out “rules” that higher beings seem to have written, but in truth the web is incredibly immature, there are zillions of crazy, ugly, strange and “rule-breaking” things that you would stifle, if you had your way.
Open your mind (and have a go yourself!). It’s this “rule-breaking” that pushes things forward, and thank God for that!
Ling
LINGsCARS
Jess: And just to make sure we don’t miss your original blog point:
Of course my website is USABLE and ACCESSIBLE, proven by the fact that many thousands of UK subjects have got new cars from it.
Would it be controvertial to suggest that my target audience (ie credit-worthy 25 to 55 year old, UK subjects top 30 percentile with good income) are reasonably intelligent enough to figure it out? I simply don’t dumb things down for the lowest common denominator.
Maybe that is your point?
Ling
LINGsCARS
I just wanted to say that I love this site.
Wish You a Merry Christmas.
And here is a verdict from people who know what they are talking about:
Yesterday at the Dorchester Hotel in London (England, for daft Americans), I was presented with the NatWest/BT Iris Award which recognises the most successful woman to have the most significant “business success and growth” as a result of successful application and use of communications and I.T.
Awarded by the wfie of the Prime Minister.
In competition with every other woman in business in the UK.
Surely these people looked at my website first? As normal users (instead of theoretically minded book readers) they will have found it lively (ahem), fun, exciting, successful and inspiring.
Quote: “The 2009 NatWest everywoman Awards took place on Wednesday, 2 December. Sarah Brown provided a keynote speech before eight fantastic women were awarded for their outstanding entrepreneurial and inspirational achievements.”
Not that I am so wonderful I don’t realise my website is “hand crafted” and divides opinion, but really Jess – you need to read less books.
Ling
LINGsCARS