Monday, July 05, 2010
It's not often I find myself writing 2 blog articles in the same day but while this is fresh in my mind.
I should start out by saying that I am not defaming or deriding Lings Cars in what I'm about to say - if that was the case I wouldn't be linking back to Ling's site. This is my personal and subjective (very important) opinion and experience whilst using Lings Cars.
Earlier today, one of my colleagues asked if I knew about lingscars.com - I’d heard the name and knew it was a successful car leasing website but I’d never been on the website.
Quickly fired up the website and to be honest, I didn’t know where to look. So many things trying to grab my attention, my retinas started to bleed quite heavily (joke). I think my visit last about 5 seconds before I closed the offending browser tab.
I wasn’t the only 1 in the office feeling this way about the site.
I then posted on Twitter and Facebook about whether Ling’s Cars is the “worst successful website in the world” and to my surprise I got a message from Ling herself.
I personally don’t like the site design but quite clearly, it works in a capacity because she’s a successful Inter-preneur. As I mentioned earlier, I felt there is too much competition for attention and effectively made me close the browser.
Ling argued that the site:
Wrong - none of the above kept me on the site, but that’s just me.
Ling then told me I’m a brussel sprouts person - love them or hate them. I get what she was saying, people clearly do like the website but I’m hazarding a guess that, like the people in my office, didn’t like it because it was a nice site but because Ling has great car deals and her crazy personality comes across.
What I was trying to get across to Ling though was that why only ever look to satisfy that 50% - with some appropriate A/B testing, Ling could figure out ways to win the 50% (people like me) who quickly close their browser or hit the back button. Doing something that simple could easily increase her profits to cater for those users.
Check out Ling's Cars for yourself and follow Ling on Twitter
PS. Ling - no one is stamping their feet 
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Well - hahaha - thanks so much for the blog post. I think Steven has it about right, actually. Look - I operate in the UK new car market. That is an annual market of over 2 million car sales. I take people from a first visit right through to final delivery of a new car (and lots of follow up afterwards).
I am a Chinese bird, with no franchise to back me up or any brand affiliation. So I have to stand on my own two feet, and stand out. I also have a profit to make and do not have the unlimited resources of motor manufacturers.
I need to grab people (120,000 uniques a month, that’s two St James’ Park filled to capacity), and I need these people to remember me for a LONG time (new car sales cycle is typically 3-4 years long) and to remember where to re-visit when they need a car.
Yet, I manage to turn over £350,000 a year which represents over £35,000,000 of annual new car sales. The argument is NOT whether Steven likes my site, but that it works. Yes, I deliberately polarise visitors, however - it works. If Steven bothers to read my 1,530+ customer testimonials, he will find that customers are absolutely pleased with my service. I have some very high profile customers, (eg: many senior armed forces, many top civil servants, CEOs of banks and top scientists, top policemen, owners of high profile businesses and even a church minister or two (despite me being a Godless Chinese immigrant)).
Why do I want to appeal to more than 50% of a 2m market? My service is second to none and beats all the UK motor industry hands down - in fact I won the BT Business/Nat West IT and Communications Award in December 2009 for my ground breaking 100% internet sales-based business and customer service software - LINGO. I answer online customer queries in under 5 minutes and publish exact response times online. No business in the UK has better online response, than me.
I am alone in the motor industry in doing any of the above. Just half of that 2m market will do, for me. Some like it, some loathe it - IMHO polarising people is good. It means my customers are all 100% on side and people who want a more traditional approach can go and get one - they know exactly what they will get when they deal with me.
It would be good if Steve’s own websites polarised people more (I think). Indeed clicking around, none of them come close to providing the sort of engagement, service and emotional feeling that mine does - but I am sure he will disagree. People visit my site and join in from all over the World, I enjoy to participate with visitors.
I am sure I could be less polarising - A/B testing (in my opinion) simply always ends up dragging you down to the average - inoffensive, careful and generic websites that do so little, full of weasel words like “we” and “try” and yet are so frequently average because most people are scared to nail their colours to their mast and stick to their guns. Steven specialises in Church sites - well, I wish THEY would be more distinctive, opinionated and entertaining - you are never going to appeal to everyone so you may as well stop diluting things in an attempt to achieve that. Like weak beer, standard bread, average coffee… appealing to the most people possible is simply asking to appeal to no one.
I’m only me, you’ve got to take me or leave me. Either is fine, but average and inoffensively boring, I am not. I do not try to convert everyone like the Jehovah nutters, I am more like Marmite or those brussel sprouts. Either spit me out or gobble me up. No middle ground 
But, thanks for the blog post!
Ling
Digital Evangelist
1 East Greenlees Road | Glasgow | G72 8TU
M: 07766 49 49 49
E: hello@digitalevangelist.net
© All Rights Reserved 2009
Yorick Peterse
July 05th
Ah, Ling’s cars. Had the same problem with her about a year ago when I tweeted that the website was probably the worst I’ve even seen.
I still wonder how on earth somebody thought that website would work out, probably the only reason people visit it is because they really have to.