Going for the gold

Hummer.com ranks highest among automotive manufacturer websites for usefulness in new-vehicle shopping for a second consecutive time, according to the JD Power and Associates 2008 Manufacturer Web Site Evaluation Study (MWES) - Wave 1, writes MarketingCharts.

The semi-annual study measures the usefulness of manufacturer websites during the new-vehicle shopping process. New-vehicle shoppers evaluate websites in four key areas: appearance, speed, navigation, and information/content.

Hummer ranks highest with an index score of 867 on a 1,000-point scale - a two-point decline from the last wave of the study, which was released in July 2007.

Following Hummer in the top three rankings are Lincoln and Kia. Lincoln ranks among the top three for the first time; its website provides a strong example of robust content that manufacturers are increasingly beginning to offer on their vehicle model pages, JD Power said.

Premium vs. Non-Premium Vehicle Sites

The study also found that the average index score for websites of premium vehicle manufacturers has surpassed the average score for sites of non-premium manufacturers for the first time since Wave 1 of the 2006 study.

Among those non-premium sites that show the largest decreases since the previous wave of the study, one of the reasons for declines tends to be a failure to successfully integrate new model-page content features such as video and interactive demonstrations.