Roll up, roll up to Volkswagen.co.uk - the brand new website realised by digital masters Tribal DDB is a simple, clean, intuitive white space where your eye is focused on the car and your attention on the user experience.
After a year and a half’s work by a dedicated team of 50 people, ranging from designers to account management, the project comes in response to the swiftly evolving purchasing behaviours of modern, aware consumers. As retail spaces became less sales–oriented and more focused on experience and engagement in a bid to transform the consumer in a ‘trysumer’, the digital space seems to be the perfect medium for DIY sofa-based customisation.
Volkswagen’s relationship marketing manager, Marianne Nicholas, explains: ‘The challenge for us was to respond to this change and ensure our website is equipped to give buyers and owners the information they need at the touch of a button. The old site has seen a massive rise in visits over the past three years – up from 500,000 in November 2004 to 1.4 million in November 2007, which clearly indicates the importance of the web in a customer’s buying process. Our new site offers the most realistic experience on the web of what it’s like to sit in and walk around a Volkswagen car – it’s a richer, more responsive experience and heralds a new approach in the web’s role in selling cars.’
Witness the success of the FIAT 500 concept lab, in which auto enthusiasts contributed their suggestions and saw them worked in to the final design of the car. Thanks to increasingly speedy broadband, automotive websites are becoming virtual showrooms where users have the possibility to configure and explore their future car without the distraction of a sales man urging you to transform your Golf into aull-spec space ship and making you feel obsolete if you don’t have the latest acronymed gizmo - EPS, EDG, AFR.
The avant-garde 3D configurator doesn’t just help build a car; in the very near future visitors will be able to book test drives in real time. Marketers have realised that the web platform is essential in the online – offline – online purchasing process: buyers go to the web to get info on their potential next car, then they go see it and try it in the shop to come back again online for the customisation and final decision. Well done to Adage’s network of the year – the first time a digital agency has scooped this honour.
http://adage.com/article?article_id=123184
