Little Pinch of Salt

My little TT* has served me well, but it’s time to get a new car. Being a Geek Girl, car shopping begins online. I’ve downloaded the road tests from Car magazine (thank you for making them freely available), I’ve been to Toyota to test drive the Yaris, and it’s time to tackle the Mazda2 (and the Honda Jazz is the last on the list). Not knowing where the Mazda dealership is located, I took to the Internets to find it, which led me to a little test drive of the websites of the cars in the running for Blake’s New Chariot.

The short story: Mazda is more “doom doom” than “zoom zoom”, Toyota leads the pack and Honda hobbles along in the middle (though still far ahead of Mazda’s online offering).

The longer story: I made my subjective opinion based on -
1. How easily I could locate my closest dealer.
2. How easily I could get information about the vehicles I am interested in.
3. General very subjective opinion about the website.

1. Being able to locate a dealer online
Landing on the Toyota website, there is a clear and easy to use Dealer Quick Find which is a search box right on the page. And the results page: it’s got links to maps and directions to the dealer. Being directionally challenged, these are things I like!

Moving on to Mazda and Honda, the links to their dealer locations are not as prominent, and there are no maps! And, on the Mazda site, they even managed to get a typo into the address. Tut tut.

2. How easily can I get information about the cars I am interested in
It is easiest to find and compare on the Toyota website, and both Honda and Toyota let you download the brochures for their cars as a pdf. Mazda has an e-brochure which only works on Windows. So, I can’t even view their brochure on my (now happily working) Mac. Grrrrr.

3. General very subjective opinion
All three sites use Flash on their homepages, but the Mazda site seemed to take forever to load. Mazda has a lot of little tools which I am sure seemed like a good idea to the planning team, but on the whole are poorly executed. The website seems not to take any consideration of the user, which makes me wonder if the car is going to feel the same way. Toyota continues on its track record of reliable with a website that caters better my needs. Toyota links easily to a search for previously loved cars, and also has a link to its Facebook page. And Honda, I haven’t looked too closely!

Mac Mazda2 Fail

I probably won’t make a purchase decision based on a website, but if I did, I’d be sticking to Toyota. Mazda didn’t even let me access the basic information I would need. In fact, the Mazda website looks like it was designed by an ad agency: pretty (if you like that sort of thing) but lacking in functionality.

Scott, BMW is a little out of my price range right now, but give me a couple of years and I’ll be test driving your website too!

*Toyota Tazz – no zippy coupe for me (yet)