If you’re in the process of researching new cars right now, you’ve probably visited as many as a dozen auto manufacturers’ websites looking for details on the vehicles that interest you, and you’ve likely used the build-and-price tools on those sites to price out cars with the features you want.

You probably also have opinions about those websites that vary as widely as your impressions of the cars themselves, even if you can’t say exactly why you prefer one over another. That’s where marketing research firm JD Power and Associates’ annual Canadian manufacturer website evaluation study comes in: the study ranks the websites of major automakers to show which brands best have their finger on the pulse of how car shoppers want to research their purchases.

This year’s top site was Infiniti.ca, which outscored 28 other mainstream manufacturer websites in a survey that asked more than 3,300 Canadian car shoppers to rate their recent experiences researching new vehicles online. According to JD Ney, JD Power’s manager of automotive research and consulting, a successful website is all about content and how it’s presented.

“It wasn’t really that long ago that the car shopping process involved a customer going to different dealerships to speak to salespeople and pick up glossy brochures on each model they were interested in,” said Ney. “That was the only way that someone could do their primary research on what car they wanted, and that’s fundamentally different today. Now, that glossy brochure is, ideally, replaced with a really great website.”

JD Power has been conducting this survey for nearly 15 years, and in that time Ney said automaker websites have come a long way. “The gap between best and worst is really quite small relative to where it used to be; every brand’s website lives between ‘not bad’ and ‘pretty good.'” To wit: Infiniti.ca earned a score of 779 out of a possible 1,000, while last-place Dodge.ca was good enough for 721.

That begs the question of why – if mainstream automakers’ websites are indeed that good – such a survey is even necessary. After learning this year’s results and then browsing Infiniti.ca, our impression was that the site’s design could have been based on the criteria JD Power uses to create the ranking. As it turns out, that’s no accident, according to Infiniti Canada’s managing director, Stephen Lester.

“(Our latest site) was developed in December 2013, and a lot of research did go into looking at JD Power’s criteria in terms of setting up what consumer expectations were, and how we could deliver on that,” said Lester. “We looked at (site) elements that were important to us, and cross-referenced those with what JD Power says are the key drivers for overall consumer satisfaction.”

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Certainly, those drivers are different now than they were when auto manufacturers first established a presence on the web, but while JD Ney says the Internet has altered consumer behaviour, what hasn’t changed is the auto manufacturer’s end goal, which is to sell vehicles.

“Among the Gen Y/millennial set, the majority of them said they would be willing to do everything up to and including providing a down payment online, before getting to the dealership,” said Ney. “That’s a very different way to think about the automotive retail space: people are still kicking tires (‘clicking’ sounds more appropriate, here), but now they’re doing it from their couch.”

Ney doesn’t believe the Internet will ever spell the end of the test drive, or put car dealerships out of business. What it has already done, and will continue to do, is allow shoppers to cut down the number of dealers they need to visit in person.

“What we’ve found is that the people who have a highly satisfactory experience on (a manufacturer’s) website are more likely to show up at that dealership to test drive a car,” said Ney. “In a world where people are visiting fewer dealerships, your website has to be as effective as possible.”

For Infiniti’s part, that means a site that appeals to the emotional side of buying a car, “while delivering on some sort of value message,” says Stephen Lester. “You want to have price tools, and a (vehicle) configurator is really key, but it’s also the functionality of those pieces.”

Ney says interactive elements, like a 360-degree view of the car (as opposed to static images), allow an automaker to “romance” shoppers who visit the site to learn more about a car or truck. Video content seems to have a positive impact on the consumer experience, too. The most telling statistic, however, is that 67 percent of shoppers who were “delighted” with their experience using an automaker’s website said they were more likely to test drive a vehicle from that brand, compared to just 17 percent of those who were “disappointed” in a brand’s site.

Still, all the effort manufacturers put into allowing consumers to virtually “build” the car they want online can create more questions than it answers, said Mike Lynett, senior product manager for autoTRADER.ca’s new car division.

“There’s a lot of ambiguity in vehicle pricing,” said Lynett. “There are different incentives applied at different times of the month, and there are volume quotas dealers have to meet, so you get certain dealers that are extremely motivated to move vehicles at the end of the month.”

Lynett says autoTRADER.ca’s new car listings simplify the process by showing “real” pricing on vehicles that already exist and are available on dealer lots.

“(With a vehicle like a Ford) F-150, there are so many build combinations, you can build it a million and a half different ways,” he said. “The build-and-price mechanisms tend to be cumbersome, so we show shoppers cars that are already built, so they can see the actual prices dealers are willing to sell them at. You can locate dealers that have the vehicle you want, and you can see it and drive it that day.”

Lynett said his company’s goal is to put the consumer on equal footing with the dealer with respect to the information they have, and to make them comfortable in the car buying process.

“There’s a real difference between helping someone simply find the best price on a car, rather than feeling like they had a good experience and got a fair price.”

Even with sites like autoTRADER.ca doing what they can to streamline car buying, an automaker’s own website is often the first point of contact between brand and buyer, and Ney said that’s why manufacturers will continue to put so much effort into making them work well.

“The opportunity is there for a mainstream brand to knock one out of the park with a satisfying and intuitive web experience. If one of those brands could figure it out, they could really set themselves apart and give themselves a great opportunity to sell more cars.”

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