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.