Comments on: BMW, Between driving and browsing experiences

By: Jon Beattie

Jon Beattie — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:16:59 +0000

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.

By: CuoreSportivo

CuoreSportivo — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:35:32 +0000

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

By: Fred Oliveira

Fred Oliveira — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:38:28 +0000

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.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:21:41 +0000

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.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:07:27 +0000

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.

By: miles

miles — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:33:38 +0000

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.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:05:57 +0000

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.

By: Fred Oliveira

Fred Oliveira — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:12:26 +0000

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.

By: Tim Perry

Tim Perry — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:03:02 +0000

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?