In the market for a new luxury car? Chances are you may not find what you're looking for at the auto manufacturer's own websites, according to Best and Worst of Brand Building Web Sites 2007: Automotive, a new study conducted by Forrester Research.

For the study, Forrester graded the sites of five luxury automotive brands (Audi, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche) to determine how well they communicate their brand image and deliver value to consumers -- what it terms brand action. Only the Lexus and Porsche sites managed to pass the brand image tests, and only Lexus passed the brand action analyses.

"The results didn't really surprise me," says the report's author, Forrester Research principal analyst Ron Rogowski. "We've looked at a number of automotive sites over the past 10 years, and in general automotive has been pretty weak in terms of the user experience."

Still, he says, some brand image scores were surprising. BMW, for instance, "undercuts content with ho-hum language and imagery" with a site that features vague category names and illegible text. Audi was cited for "unsophisticated content and function," failing to "differentiate any parts of the customer experience, providing just enough content and function to satisfy users' minimum requirements."

The two key components to any website, Rogowski says, are "a clear definition of what your brand means and what you're trying to achieve with it, and -- what's hopefully obvious -- the perception that you understand what people are trying to do when they come to your site. Many of these sites work almost internally, and seem to be built more for the people who build them than for those who actually use them."

By their very nature, he adds, luxury car sites "are for targeting users who are particularly auto-savvy, not just your average person who's looking for a sedan to get him from Point A to Point B. They're into cars somewhat, but they don't know everything. They want to know what the options are, what high-end sound system a particular model might have, and so on."

Leading the pack
It's for those reasons that Lexus and Porsche succeed at the brand image tests. Porsche's site features a "model selector" that demonstrates crisp audio for each vehicle. Once shoppers select a vehicle to configure, a 360-degree zoom function lets them examine every detail. Layouts provide visual consistency with offline ads and brochures, and vehicle descriptions include specs like "top track speed" that stay true to Porsche's motor sport heritage.

The Lexus site uses high-resolution images set against dramatic backgrounds to reinforce its TV and print ads, and includes a comparison engine that pits Lexus models against competitors' vehicles on such dimensions as features, performance, and ratings.

Lexus also wins in the brand action category by delivering detailed descriptions of interior features like the Mark Levinson audio system, written in jargon-free language and including a link to a Mark Levinson sub-site from which users can get even more details, including speaker-placement maps.

Lexus gets it right, Rogowski adds, with "language that makes you not only understand what its 'luxury appointments' -- as opposed to 'internal features' -- are, but with reinforcing images that have you practically melting into the buttery-smooth leather seats. It's nicely done, not overdone."

Porsche, meanwhile, flunks the test with confusing and overlapping category names and by being the only reviewed site that doesn't enable users to download or order a brochure. "Brochures generally look fantastic and really draw you in," Rogowski says. "You don't want to drive to the dealer just to get a brochure."

Changing online needs
Not everyone is convinced that luxury car sites are stalling out. Steve Witten, executive director of research at J.D. Power and Associates, says that while such sites "used to be just online brochures, today they're very effective in meeting shoppers' needs."

While agreeing that such brands as Lexus and Hummer are a cut above, Witten says, "there are no bad manufacturers' sites out there. It's just that some are better than others. They can be cumbersome to navigate, the pictures take a little too long to download, and generally they're not incorporating a lot of video, which can help explain different features and benefits beyond just putting your commercials up."

JDP's research finds that overall customer satisfaction scores for autos (the company hasn't broken out figures for luxury models) have risen from 2001's average of 676 to 2007's 836, with 1,000 being a perfect score.

Mike Jennings, general manager, automotive, at online market research firm Compete, says that all auto manufacturers' sites have become "much more effective" in engaging customers -- though it's still a work in progress.

"They're evolving more and more to engaging on the customers' terms, not [the manufacturers'] terms," he says, citing Lexus' variety of site content and interaction opportunities. "It offers an array of shopping tools and rich photo gallery, an opportunity to opt-in for regular communications, and site-unique sections for owners, certified pre-owned, and financial services."

In the future, Jennings adds, such sites will "be more about allowing the customers as many opportunities as possible to engage with their brands."