Audi.com

The marketing money spent so far to get my attention, would require the sale of a top model Audi or a couple of lower priced Audi's to give them a profit. You would expect them to develop their Web site with all the care an attention they put into their cars. Their Web site is their electronic brochure that is handed around by email, SMS, links, RSS, and endless other means. Instead of a glossy picture of the R8, many people see only the following failed attempt.

There are some great ideas in the site and you can see the influence of someone who is good at designing picture books for car enthusiasts, but this is a Web site, not a book, and the kids creating the Web pages have used everything they want to list on their resume, instead of what works. The site is almost a classy professional Web site but unfortunately saturated with Web site design student's wet dream features, a Web site I can use in my master classes on "What not to do".

Audi/Lamborghini Gallardo/R8

A quick diversion for the car enthusiast. The Lamborghini Gallardo 5 litre v10 is a touch expensive but the Audi R8 takes the basic Gallardo, replaces the v10 with a 4 litre v8, makes the cockpit into a cabin, and sells the resultant R8 at a price where you can afford a his & her set. Two R8s are more economical than a Gallardo and a divorce.

Your top of the line CEO could buy herself a red or black R8 and buy her husband a blue R8. Come to think of it, she could buy a red R8 for clubbing, a black R8 to match her other outfits, a metallic silver R8 for work, and still afford a divorce.

The R8 can use the Gallardo bits because Audi owns Lamborghini, a bit of Vorsprung durch Italian Bull. If you want the whole family tree, Porsche own a slice of Volkswagen, Volkswagen own a controlling interest in Audi, plus Volkswagen own Bentley and Bugatti outright, and Audi owns Lamborghini. The four rings of the Audi logo represent the four companies merged to form Auto Union, which then bought NSU and later changed name to Audi, the name of their most popular brand from the four merged firms. It sounds like cousins marrying then sharing engines and body parts.

Daimler Benz, of Mercedes fame, owned Audi and Lamborghini for a while, which gives the middle part of the tree a few bends that look like neighbouring couples divorcing and marrying each other's partner. If Daimler Benz had stayed married to Audi, Audi would be related to Doge who are owned by Chrysler who are now owned by Daimler, which leads to thoughts of a freak progeny. Dodge built the might Tomahawk V10 motorcycle that was never street legal. Audi produced motorcycles and bought NSU, which used to make wilder, for Europeans, motorcyles. What if Audi/NSU and Daimler/Chrysler/Dodge bred a descendant of the Tomahawk that was street legal? You could ride at 666 kilometres per hour (400 mils per hour) without air bags or a seat belt.

Out on the Internet, the Lamborghini Web site is infected with the same mistakes as the Audi Web site. I did not look at all the other Web sites to see if there is a family history of abusing Web site visitors.

Hire a Web Architect

You start your house and office designs with an architect instead of an interior decorator or a plumber so why start your Web site at the wrong end? Bypass the mistakes of audi.com and similar expensive glossy sites.

Avoid wasting 80 percent or more of your investment, consider a professional session with a Web Architect. Improving your plan costs less than one tenth the price of fixing the Web site after the site is launched and you do not loose all those prospective customers who visit your site in between the launch and the time consuming repairs.

Audi systematically test their cars before release but did not do the same with their Web site. Audi spent ten million dollars to add a third wind tunnel tester to their development centre yet missed a few thousand to perform simple checks on their Web site. Definitely not Vorsprung durch Web.

I offer management presentations on the difference a Web Architect makes and workshops on Web Architecture for your Web developers, both at far less cost than trying to reclaim lost customers. You can start your next Web project on the right direction from day one with remarkably little effort. Your staff learn the right way to treat prospective customers online.

Conclusion

Avoid the pitfalls of audi.com, talk with a Web Architect before you select a Web developer.