"The site was very effective in driving excitement and interest and really communicating the brand," said Bonny Brown, director of research and public services at Keynote. "Lexus also did very well. Some of their strengths are site organization, vehicle customization features and vehicle photos. Cadillac did very well in all these areas as well, and that's what put it at No. 1."
For the customer experience study, Keynote ranked the luxury auto sites in more than a dozen categories, including customer satisfaction, customer acquisition and attraction to the brand.
Cadillac, Lexus and Saab topped the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings, which measured site success across the more than 250 metrics, including vehicle search, comparison, customization and quote/pricing functions. The brands examined for the study were Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes Benz, Saab and Volvo.
More than half, or 58 percent, of all prospective customers visiting the Lexus site said they were likely to test-drive a Lexus after doing so, up 11 percent from the number who said that before using the site, Keynote said. Cadillac, whose brand started in the middle of the pack in terms of auto buyer perceptions, skyrocketed after users visited its site. After using the Cadillac site, 79 percent of auto buyers had a positive perception of the brand, according to Keynote.
Saab had the greatest increase in brand perception after buyers visited its site, the study said. The number of prospective customers who had a positive perception of Saab increased by 32 percent after exposure to the site. Auto buyers described the Saab site as "fun" and "friendly."
"This [study] helps us understand what is most important on a Web site," Brown said. "If [an automaker] only has so much to invest, what is the area that you should invest [in] because it has the biggest bang for your dollar on driving brand and purchase intention? So it turns out that visual appeal, ease of finding a vehicle and site organization are the three top areas that had the greatest impact on people actually intending to purchase."
Keynote also looked at the technical aspects of the luxury automakers' sites, including reliability and responsiveness.
Keynote found that the Jaguar, Lexus and Saab Web sites had the industry's best reliability, meaning those sites were highly available and showed little or no downtime. The Lincoln, Acura and Jaguar sites were the best in terms of site responsiveness, which involved testing how fast the sites downloaded and the array of images typical on luxury auto sites.
Keynote said the luxury auto industry has some of the most complex Web pages of any industry it studies, with almost every site using rich media content and Flash. Despite that complexity, most of the luxury auto sites that were studied provided excellent performance for broadband users, Brown said. However, it often took dial-up users close to a minute and a half to download the automakers' home pages, Brown said.
In terms of site reliability, Keynote found a large gap between the leading sites and those that were lower-ranked. The top-ranked sites were available better than 99 percent of the time, while the bottom five sites averaged just 92 percent -- with several of the poorer sites registering more than 50 hours of outage in a single month.
Keynote does not identify the lower-ranking sites.