Many car manufacturers spend big bucks on making their car websites perfect by adding fancy features and visual media. These are all great things to do but will this really help if no one is interested in the car itself? Cars are one of the most expensive things people buy after homes and the research people do while searching for a car can takes months or even years. The suprising thing is that most popular sites for cars are not the manufacturers’ sites themselves but instead sites where all types of cars are aggregated into one.
An example of this would be the autos section on Yahoo! and cars.com. The main factor that influences the search behaviour of customers is the reliability of information on these sites. Sites such as Yahoo autos has sections with people’s and third party reviews where they discuss the car and its pros and cons. These features are not available on sites such as toyota.ca or honda.ca. The implications for marketers is that instead of focusing too much on the manufacturers’ site itself, more focus should be directed to third party websites which can ultimately make or break your product!