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BMW, Between driving and browsing experiences

Fred Oliveira on April 2, 2007

I was just browsing the BMW website for a few car models (partially motivated by Diego Rodriguez’s “Jolie-Laide” post at metacool) and was astonished at how wrong it felt. I look at it and can’t stop thinking about how un-BMWish it feels.

BMW Z4 Coupe

You can actually try my experience yourself - hit bmw.com and try to find the price for the BMW Z4 Coupé. It’s not about finding it (you will, I’m sure), but about how long and how many clicks it takes. A shame, really.

BMW does great cars - so when you drive a BMW, you expect a great experience. Same thing should be true for navigating their website - which is probably the first step into the BMW experience for many people curious about the brand and their cars. If that feels wrong, what impact does it have on the potential buyer?

On car dashboards and site navigation

No matter how complex the inner works of a car are, you get on the seat and the dashboard will be clear and simple. It’s actually a bit like magic - how so much complexity can be cut down and streamlined into a few buttons and meters. Everything is “right there”. Websites should feel the same way.

BMW Z4 Coupe

How does the navigation of your web-application or website compare to a car’s dashboard? How easy or hard is it to get to the complex functionality? How much complexity is hidden away? I can’t see myself pulling levers and sub-buttons in a car dashboard, and neither should we all with websites.

Final notes

Naturally this post isn’t about picking on a brand - heck, I’d probably shell out the money for the car if I had it. It is about the disconnect between the attention given to the driving experience and the site experience. And it’s definitely not a problem of BMW alone - almost all car brand websites share this problem.

They’re still about making cars but if they’re designing experiences (and they are), they might as well take the next step and provide the full package.

Related Link: Auto Repair Find auto repair shops located in the United States.


Comments on this post

Tim Perry

Firstly, your link’s broken, goes to BMW.co rather than .com.

That said, I see what you mean, in both the United States and international sites. However, I looked at bmw.co.uk as well. One click, one mouse over and starting price is shown. If they can cut out the fluff on one of their sites why can’t they carry the same design across the atlantic? (And why do we need different sites, barring currency differences, between UK and US anyways?).

And last but not least, why so much clunky, slow feeling flash?

Fred Oliveira

Thanks for the heads up about the link - its been fixed. The problem with internationalization is something I’ve thought long and hard for quite a while - Nike’s site is a disgrace when it comes to picking a location and language combination (at least it used to be). It’s not easy moving a huge ship like BMW, but these site discrepancies make me cringe.

Alex

Oh, I don’t know Fred. Have you ever tried to use the BMW iDrive? The website is actually right in line with that user experience.

miles

I was going to say, BMWs may be beautifully built and functionally designed but when it comes to an electronic interface their web site is about par for the course. iDrive is a nightmare.

Brian

I totally agree - this is a pervasive problem for all auto manufacturers that I’ve encountered. They’re marketing departments are so old and crufty that they don’t really understand how to use the web.

The other half of the equation is the dealerships themselves. At least in the US, dealers perpetrate even worse design and experience atrocities. I get an email newsletter from Audi that makes me grind my teeth in my sleep it’s so awful.

Erik

I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about here. If you go to http://www.bmwusa.com, you don’t even need to click once to see the price of a car! You simply place the cursor over “Vehicles”, scroll down to which series and model you want to know about, and the ‘Starting at’ price is listed right in the convenient pop-up flash. How is this hard to find? If someone can’t navigate this site, they might as well throw out the entire idea of getting a BMW with iDrive and trying to operate that.

Fred Oliveira

Erik, yeah, apparently bmwusa.com doesn’t have that problem, but bmw.com (the international site, that links all the others up) does. The experience of the two sites is actually completely different - which on its own makes me wonder how exactly they managed to nail one down and not all of them.

CuoreSportivo

Actually BMW in UK sells different cars than BMW US. For example no 1 series and no 4 cyl engines

Jon Beattie

My company has to work with the BMW web assets and guideline and I agree it is somewhat “over engineered”. We work with some other German companies and they all seem to go down this road. All the design and production is done by BBDO Interone in Munich. Again, if you realise that an advertising agency is in charge of design and usability, then that should put to rest any questions about why you need so many clicks. The Flash movies and JavaScript they create is incredibly complex and rich in content, and herein lies the problem. With regards to USA and UK, they are such substantial size markets they get to do their own thing, whereas as in the market where we do all the BMW interactive work we have to adhere to the rules from Germany.

Something to say?