Sunday, May 10, 2015

Media Room Evaluation - Ford VS Toyota

Ford



Ford’s website primary purpose seems to be to keep the audience updated with their new features. To provide the latest news on their products and to show how they give back to the community to those who visit their website. When I visit their website, it seems to be that they are trying to reach mostly men, and people attracted by automobiles and in the mechanics, engineering and technical fields. The website is user-friendly, they have a very clean template, not with too many graphics or much information put together.  Everything is in place, straight to the point and easy to find. The current information showed in their website is updated information, it’s fresh, innovative and unique content. 

They use graphics and no animations or sound.  The colors they use on their website are the colors of the company, dark blue, light blue and white.  When you see it there is no doubt that you are on Ford’s website.  They made a good use of colors for their website to continue to show their brand and their essence to their online visitors. 

Everything is very user-friendly, the text is easy to read.  However, in my opinion, I consider that the size of the text in the home page should be a little bit smaller.  Since the text is all in caps and then the size of the text is too big, in my opinion it seems a little demanding.  I understand that as a car company, it is maybe something they want to portray.  However, I still consider that if they minimize the size of the text just a little bit, it will be less crowded and easy to read.  The rest of the text in the news and in the other tabs is in good size.  They have many hyperlinks that direct the online users to their stories, news, etc. and they are all appropriate used and work perfectly well.

Click here to see Ford's media room.



Toyota




Toyota’s purpose of the website, seems almost the same as Ford’s, however, they both give their message across in a very different way.  Toyota’s website is very simple and clean, it is all white with some color in it making it easy to navigate.  Since the information they provide is about safety, and then they show some posts of photos with children’s toys, it makes me think they are trying to reach young parents and families.  

The site is very easy to navigate as well and the information is up to date. One of the things I found it was a good strategy from their PR team was to include their Tweeter’s feed. That makes you see immediately that they are connecting with the rest of the world via social media, it also allows you to see their recent posts, plus it gives you some sort of incentive to visit their social media channels and start following them.  It makes them show the world that they have an online presence and it gives them credibility. They have no sound on their website. Another thing that I thought that was a good strategy was to include videos, that also makes the online user visiting the website the curiosity to know what are they showing in the video and it makes them want to see it.

The only thing that I would suggest to Toyota is to design a more appealing layout for their website.  I am sure they can create something more creative and innovative rather than a simple website.  I am a believer that simple and clean websites are always the best and they are making a great job with that. However, since they are a car agency, they must portray that innovative and creative image to their audience who visit their website.  I consider that they can keep the colors they are already using, white, red and black, just using a more unique template. The text they use is very simple text and easy to read.  The hyperlinks work appropriately and are used correctly.

Click here to see Toyota's media room.