Usability research

[JeremyL]

I am working on a proposal for a local luxury car dealership. I need to find some research on user experiences with websites. What I am looking for is research that backs my ideas that text based sites are more user friendly for people and in turn that improves the browsing and buying experience.

I personally know it does but I need to show the execs. some research to back me up. Any links or research report names would be very helpful to me on this matter.

Thanks

[vkaryl]

Um. But if I were going to load up www.luxurycarexamplesite.com, I wouldn't want a text based site. I'd want a site that had various search capabilities to start with, such as "I want a car. I want to SEE IT. In COLOR. No, a full-size truck. A Ford. An F-450. Ooooh - THAT'S GREAT! No.... TEAL-GREEN. Now I want pics of the interior. Is it leather? Did a smoker own it? Was it in an accident ever? You want HOW much for it?" Etc.

Believe me, no one looking at a lux vehicle online would have ANY interest in a text-based site.

Hmmm. Now what I REALLY want to see is a sterling-silver Hummer....

[JeremyL]

vkaryl,

You sort of contradict yourself. You want pics and info, how is any of that not part of a text based site? 95% of dealer sites that I find are either really bad designs where you can't find anything or almost 100% flash and graphics that take forever to load and barely give you any info. Buying a car online is NO different then buying any other item online. It's all about the information and the calls for action.

Now I agree having the very heavy grphics on manufacturers sites is great, but once they are done with the manufacturer sites they start looking for local dealers, what they have in stock, and so on.

I think you are confusing what I mean by text based site. You are thinking webmasterworld level of text. I am thinking proper design techniques so that graphics are not needed to heavily to make a site attractive or sexy.

Mod's you can nuke this if I can't post it, but here is an example of the closest thing I can find to the perfect auto dealer site and it still misses some key things - manhattanautogroup[dot]com

That website, but with more actual galleries of each car is what I consider the proper mix of text, information (maybe a little more), and graphics.

I could give you pages and pages of bad ones, but we have all seen them.

So back to the original question... :)

[edit_g]

What I am looking for is research that backs my ideas that text based sites are more user friendly for people and in turn that improves the browsing and buying experience.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but you don't need usability research, you need something to back up your preconcieved ideas. There is a difference.

You should include user interface research with their customers in your quote - then you can tell them what is right for their site backed up with research done on the people who are going to be using the site. Each case is different - you can't apply the same principles to a travel site as you can to a coffee site.

[danieljean]

Yeah, I think you're going about this the wrong way. People don't want text, they want answers to their questions... talk to the sales reps, ask them what the most often asked questions are, then you have good material to start building your car pages.

Also, what's the business goal of such a site? I would imagine getting people to come in for a test drive? Answers to their questions, a gallery of photos of the car... and an offer on each page to come try it out?

Once you have the site set up, you can test changes to see what results in more calls (which assumes they'll have the sense to track it).

[JeremyL]

danieljean,

Yea I think the original post was just worded wrong. I think people got the sense I wanted a site like WW for the dealer. I was just looking for studies to help me push them away from an all graphic or all flash site like I see so many dealers have.

You are right on all the points you mentioned, they are part of my plan for the site. Also I'm not going in saying look, text is better as a selling point. I just know how auto managers are, and the question is bound to come up about a fully animated flash site and since xyz dealer has it so should they. So I was just looking for ammunition for that question.

[danieljean]

There are a lof of clients, and in fact some designers, that don't realize flash is not indexed by Google. If they want their site to be found, none of the crucial information should be hidden in swf files :)

[Morgenhund]

One argument might be, loading pages with excessive graphics takes longer; since there are common sence limits of loading a web-page (generally no more than 3 seconds, 1 second would be super, if there are more than 10 seconds then user will non wait until your page loads).

For more info you can search for books and web site of Jakob Nielsen.

But at least, it would be better to prepare some page templates (with different amount of graphics), and find some people to test their experiences.

[chrisnrae]

Maybe buy them a copy of "Don't Make Me Think" where someone has *gasp* highlighted some key points.

You could try doing a small usability sample and then showing them the results.