Hi, Im Vincent. Im a strategic planner at Tribal DDB where I have been working on Volkswagen for 3 years.

ACCOUNT PLANNING

THE NEW VOLKSWAGEN.CO.UK

Today Im going to show you how, by keeping a continuous focus on visitors needs, planning helped the team to create a beautifully simple experience for Volkswagen.
website

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But first, let me give you some background. By 2007, when we started this project, the Volkswagen website was 6 years old. Because the Internet is moving quickly, 6 years is very ancient by Internet standards

6
YEARS
SOURCE: WIRED AND NEW SCIENTIST

Actually about 42 years old if you believe Wired that define Internet years as dog years.

42
INTERNET YEARS
SOURCE: WIRED AND NEW SCIENTIST

And the reason why we needed a new website was that, during that time, manufacturers websites, to a degree, had taken on the role of dealerships.

Why

new website?
P28 How to do a VW website?

The new Volkswagen website Built the same way we build our cars

In fact, in 2001, 20% of consumers were using the Internet as an information source during the car buying process.

20%
USE INTERNET DURING THE VEHICLE BUYING PROCESS
SOURCE: CAP GEMINI

By 2007, it was 80%. Prospects spent more time online than in any other medium; of an average nineteen hours researching their next car purchase, eleven were spent online.

80%
USE INTERNET DURING THE VEHICLE BUYING PROCESS
SOURCE: CAP GEMINI

It really impacted the showrooms visits. The average customer visited six showrooms before buying in 2001.

6
SOURCE: NETWORK Q

VISITS TO A DEALERSHIP BEFORE BUYING A CAR

In 2007 it was less than 3.

3
SOURCE: NETWORK Q

VISITS TO A DEALERSHIP BEFORE BUYING A CAR

To address this behaviour change, we designed a brand new online experience for Volkswagen that Id like to introduce you to now with a small video.

website

I think it is a beautifully simple online experience. And it does look and feel like Volkswagen. But, as most experience design, it is actually very complex to get there. If we knew that people didnt buy Volkswagens like they used to, we had to dig deeper.

buy

Through research, we identified 13 key stages of purchase and ownership. And for each of them, we discovered unmet needs, whether they were emotional or rational as well as potential solutions to address them.

Lets take the stage called try the car as an example. It is a very important stage for Volkswagen as it often bridges the gap between consideration and purchase.

What if you allowed people to book a test drive as they book their holidays? We did this exercise for the 13 stage and then tried to crystallize that into a video vision to inspire the broader team.

It is not enough to understand these key stages individually. At the end of the day, we have to help people progress from one stage to another, and above all bridging the gap between consideration and purchase. So, when you think about it, the challenge then is how can we make this journey easier than that of the competition?

How

we
V

easier

others?

Our answer to that challenge was a conceptual model for how people would experience the site. This model allowed us to visualise the optimal user journey as well as the more complex reality. The experience is not always linear and multiple entry points are possible.

With the 13 key stages, our vision video and our conceptual model, we had now enough knowledge to build our wall of briefs.

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We

the wall of briefs

GET SMALLER

This wall allowed us to keep every corner of the website experience under planning inspection; each stage of the visitors journey was issued a flexible brief.

The cascading nature of the different experiences created dependencies between each brief that required day-to-day attention.

DEPENDENCIES

DEPENDENCIES

BOOK A TEST DRIVE

DEPENDENCIES WITH RETAILERS

DEPENDENCIES WITH COMMUNITY

If we started to truly understand the experience as a whole, we had think one level smaller. We needed to prioritise all our initiatives to maximise the impact of our final product.

er

We had a living wall of briefs filled with thousands of ideas. And then Which ones do you do first? Which ones will help us reach our objectives?

We needed to prioritise those ideas across our business, brand and web filters.

This methodology allowed us to prioritise our wall of briefs as well as defining key phases for the project.

And it was a lot of ideas.

PRIORITISE 673 IDEAS USING 11 FILTERS OR 7,403 RATINGS

Obviously, this project type of project could never happen without the rest of the team. But I think that our effort to remain involved throughout the eighteen months via the wall of briefs and sit amongst user experience architects, designers and developers helped us keep continuous focus on the visitor experience.

Chris

Vincent Charles

website

It ensured that the website delivered at the end was aligned with our initial vision. Every part of the site is built around the ideal experience that online car buyers would expect from Volkswagen and makes every stage of buying a car more intuitive and beautifully simple.

It is also a site that looks and behaves like no other manufacturers website.

Our focus has paid off. I picked two results amongst many that represent what, for me, success is about at Volkswagen. Grow the business while making people happier.

Volkswagen

The consumer satisfaction score went up by 16%. Volkswagen.co.uk has now the highest consumer satisfaction score across automotive websites in the UK.

+16%

Volks
SOURCE: PSYMA 2007 vs 2009

70%

81%

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Conversion to test drive, which is the most important business KPI for automotive websites, was up by 25%.

+25%

15% 12%

wagen

CONVERSION TO TEST DRIVE

SOURCE: OMNITURE 2007 vs 2008

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The most important thing to remember is that creating a beautifully simple experience is incredibly complex. To succeed planners needs to reach a level of breath and depth as never before. Breath because not are only briefing creative but also designer, technologist and user experience architect. Depth because by the nature of the experience, if you want to make every interaction counts, a single thought is not enough. You need to get into the details. In the end, it is a bit like if you had to design a new Volkswagen. And thats actually the concept we used to launch the site.