The Auto Channel: North America | Europe

Volkswagen.co.uk: A New Age of Marketing Cars Online

Site Offers Most Life-Like Experience of Choosing a Car on the Internet

LONDON, February 13 -- Today, Tribal launches the brand new site for Volkswagen.co.uk, providing customers with the most life-like experience of sitting in and walking round a new car without having to leave the comfort of their own homes.

The launch of this site is the fruition of 18 months' work by a dedicated full-time team of 50, and is one of the biggest website projects currently being worked on in London.

Teams across creative, design, account management, technical and Flex have built this site from scratch in response to demand from consumers and the increasing importance of the internet in relation to how people now reach key buying decisions when searching for a car.

Tom Roberts, the Volkswagen site Account Director at Tribal, comments: "Buying a new car can be a confusing process. Using clean white space and featuring the most progressive car configurator currently available online, we built this site to be the most simple yet most comprehensive, intuitive and engaging experience in this market."

The highly sophisticated car configurator features 3D models of the Volkswagen range (which the Tribal team spent a total of six months creating). Additionally, every option that visually changes the appearance of each model has been included. As such, visitors can see first hand how changing and including additional options will enhance the car of their choice.

In the near future, visitors to the site will also be able to book test drives, in real time, by directly accessing retailers' booking systems. They will be able to see which models are available at a specific time and retailer, and reserve a time slot on line.

Volkswagen's Relationship Marketing Manager, Marianne Nicholas, explains: "Our research shows that people looking for a new car now do the majority of their research on the internet, with visits to showrooms more than halved, down from five to two on average.

"The challenge for us was to respond to this change and ensure our website is equipped to give buyers and owners the information they need at the touch of a button. The old site has seen a massive rise in visits over the past three years - up from 500,000 in November 2004 to 1.4 million in November 2007, which clearly indicates the importance of the web in a customer's buying process. Our new site offers the most realistic experience on the web of what it's like to sit in and walk around a Volkswagen car - it's a richer, more responsive experience and heralds a new approach in the web's role in selling cars."

Key site facts:

- This site is the result of 18 months' work with a dedicated team of 50 people

- It is one of the largest websites to be built in Flex, providing a richer experience - in fact, the 15 strong Flex team hired by Tribal to build this site is thought to be one of the largest and most advanced Flex teams in the world

- The site uses dynamic feedback, which allows car buyers to search and modify their preferred car in 'real time', which is more responsive and provides a much richer customer experience

- It will allow people to book test drives directly on line

- Taking into consideration all the different options customers can configure their car with, the site offers well over one million different combinations of Volkswagen

About Tribal DDB

Tribal DDB is a full-service, digital agency that works with its clients to create Brand Demand; a business strategy that recognises the importance and power of today's consumer.

Tribal is part of the Tribal Worldwide network with 50 offices spanning 25 countries throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. In 2008, Tribal was named as the first digital agency network to win Advertising Age's Global Agency Network of the Year.