Final Web Tracking Report

Over the past month, I have reviewed two car manufacturers websites: www.nissanusa.com (Nissan) and www.acura.com (Acura). I decided on car manufacturers because I am in the car market and thought that I might find enough information on one of the two that I could possibly find a car that I liked enough to purchase. The two are competing Japanese auto manufacturers who constantly have to stay one step ahead of each other, as well as Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and others. I selected Nissan as my primary website to follow, but first I will discuss the merits of each website as I first came to them.
When I first started, I knew that website speed was going to play a major factor in my decision as to who my primary website would be. When I first visited the two sites, Nissan appeared to be much faster, used a variety of design principles well (and not so well), and stood out to be a web site worth reviewing. Acura, though well laid out, was very slow to load, and offered a very limited array of options to go through on the site. One thing I particularly liked about Nissan’s site was its interactive ability. On one page was a square box with a thumbnail of each of their cars inside, so you could scroll over MSRP without having to click and wait for another page to load. If you didn’t know which car you wanted, they had a “Need help selecting your vehicle?” page where you could see the various gas mileages of cars, their seating capacity, and price as well.
At the time that I started reviewing, both companies websites were geared towards their 2006 models, but as the month moved on they began to feature many of their 2007 models, which in turn led to the website being somewhat redesigned. On Nissan’s website, the 2007 models were labeled as “Shift 2.0”, and the website seemed to change to a Web 2.0 as well. Actresses walk and talk you through the new Shift 2.0 car features and explain credit basics, you can sit in cars and do 360 degree viewing, and almost everywhere you scroll, icons pop up at you and change color.
As far as the design principles go, contrast is easily the most different between the two. Acura’s website features a black background with white drop down menus with red highlights as you move the mouse down the menu. The cars really stand out on their page and give them more of a luxury look. Nissan’s website utilizes a fairly weak contrast between their white background and gray drop down menus, but utilizes strong contrast between the background and all of the various icons you can scroll over that are various colors. Their logo on the website is a silver complimented by a bright red that really stands out. Most of their icons have a strong opacity until you scroll over them and they turn into full bleed thumnails full of color.
The two websites also differ greatly in proximity. While everything appears to be very close together on the Nissan website, the Acura website is very spread out. This could be attributed to the fact that Nissan has roughly two to three times more car models to offer than Acura does, but the Nissan site does seem a little cluttered at times. With Acura, there is blank space, but it doesn’t seem like blank white space. It’s utilized more to highlight the cars. But on Nissan’s site, there seems to be white space because they ran out of things to put in an exact spot. Another interesting thing that I noticed is that Acura’s site is formatted in widescreen, and will fit most of the browser page, but that Nissan’s is formatted in 4:3 full screen. Furthermore, if you stretch the Nissan page out, it will not fit the contents to the size of the browser. Instead, it will keep everything the same size.
As far as alignment, it is informal all the way across. If something looks like its aligned, its just off by a pica or two. It almost looks like on Nissan’s website that they told the design team to throw as much as they could on the page, but to put a big interactive picture in the middle and it will look great. The only place where there is strong alignment in both sites is the one place it definitely needs to be: in the drop down menus. Everything else may be all over the page, but they got that part right.
Repetition comes through very well in both websites. Every page you go to has the exact same feel and look as the last one. The drop down menus have the exact same fonts. Several of the links you can click have the same fonts, creating a uniform look to the site. In the car design sections, you get a great array of options no matter which car you pick in the same menu style as all of the other cars. No complaints about repetition on either of these sites.
Navigation ease through the two websites really varied depending on which day I went to the site. The Nissan site started out much faster, but as they converted to a Web 2.0 format, it was evident that the site became much slower with more movies and interactive features that weren’t there before. The Acura site started out slow, but after the first page was downloaded after 5 seconds or so, all of the dropdown menus moved pretty fast and the time it took to get from link to link was pretty fast. The one thing that I didn’t like about the Nissan site was that even thought their home site was reasonably fast, as soon as I went to the dealer websites, they were either incredibly slow or very difficult to navigate and find what I really wanted. I realize that Nissan themselves do not design the websites, but maybe they should if it’s their cars being sold. The Acura dealer websites weren’t much better, but they were slightly easier to navigate and find out where I was going or where I wanted to be.
Both sites were well up to date on change with the two manufacturers. This included up to date financing options (confirmed by local dealerships), information on the new 2007 models, and plenty of sources to reach if you want to purchase one of their cars or at least get information. I like how Nissan integrated the Shift 2.0 theme in with their new vehicles into the new change with their website, it was a unique idea that many of the other car manufacturers had tried to come up with but had yet to succeed in recent years.
The sites were organized well for the most part; it didn’t take too many clicks to get where I needed to be. The drop down menus are of great assistance, it kept me from having to go to too many multiple pages. Of course the downside is that if your mouse falls off the menu you have to start over again, but there weren’t too many sub menus on either site. Had the alignment been better, the site could’ve been very well organized.
The sites were both pretty impressive. After taking a look at some other manufacturers websites, it was noticeable that these two stood out from the crowd. Other sites seemed to be either much more dull or harder to navigate, or in the case of Ford, both. It was much easier to judge what was good and what wasn’t after reading the textbook from class, it helped me notice that the contrast and proximity really made websites unique and different from each other in their design. It will be interesting to see what direction these sites take from here.

Shift 2.0 is here!

The last time I checked out Nissan's website, it was still in the process of explaining that Shift 2.0, a change in direction for their new lineup of vehicles was on the way. I was hoping it would mean vast improvements to the websites, especially in the area of faster download times. Well, it sort of happened. The website is still slow to get up, but once it gets going and you start in a direction, it works great. Interactive icons when you scroll over them, much easier to navigate through car selection tools, and audio added with a woman telling you that Shift 2.0 is here. There doesn't seem to be much change in cost to the new cars, but the problem is that Nissan doesn't use the website well enough to tell you about the new changes. The colors used on the site remain the same concept: A white background with a lot of gray, a ton of icons that have low opacity but become bold when scrolled over, and an occasional splash of red to keep you from being bored. Their proximity is fairly good, things aren't cluttered but there isn't a tremendous amount of white space either. Alignment is good in small increments, but it doesn't appear that they focused much on making a whole page aligned in any specific way. It gives the website kind of a formal balance/informal balance mix.
The biggest problem with the website, though improved, is still how slow it is if you aren't focused on one particular car. On more than one occasion I was able to access three different websites in another browser window while I was still waiting to see the features of the Z model that Nissan has. For every feature that Nissan adds to the site, it makes everything even slower to navigate through, even on my G5. That's all for now, this will probably be my last post on this before I start my final report.