Ad Age recently published its list of leading national advertisers for last year and the data highlights some interesting trends among automotive manufacturers.  Ad spending has been drifting downward for several years, with most manufacturers marking sharp reductions in 2008.  Chrysler, Ford, and Hyundai made the ... Read More »

Domestic manufacturers have recently moved more aggressively to share technology across their brand Web sites.  It started with physical infrastructure (e.g. servers) and common tools (e.g. financing) and now they’re going further, in some cases sharing entire site architectures. General Motors
Buick, ... Read More »

Honda ranks highest among automotive manufacturer Web sites for usefulness in new-vehicle shopping for a second consecutive time, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Manufacturer Web Site Evaluation StudySM (MWES)—Wave 2 released today. The semi-annual study, now in its tenth year, measures the usefulness ... Read More »

Manufacturers are constantly refining their brand Web sites so that visitors can get to want they want quickly.  Terminology is a critical element of this process - the words and phrases used in menus and other navigation elements must make intuitive sense to the average person. For example, "Find a Dealer" is easy to ... Read More »

After years of losing ground in the search wars, Microsoft recently launched the latest iteration of its search service.  Microsoft is positioning Bing as a “decision engine” that returns a limited set of highly relevant answers rather than a typical “search engine.”  The intent is to help ... Read More »

Internet Explorer’s strangle hold on the browser market continues to loosen as competitors make inroads - in the past two years IE’s global share of usage has slid 13 percentage points to 65.8%.  The emergence of strong alternatives has played a role in IE’s erosion: over the same time period, Firefox ... Read More »

In today’s sales environment, automotive retail successes are often determined when one’s sales are less terrible than that of a competitor.  As year-over-year sales declines for Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) vehicles are roughly less than half that of new vehicle sales, CPO vehicles overall continue to ... Read More »

People will follow you on Twitter if they get something out of it.  I follow John Byrne ( @JohnAByrne ) of Business Week because he links to some of the best and most topical business content online.  I follow automotive and Internet companies & thought leaders because that’s my field.  I follow ... Read More »