- Higher ranking than companies such as Microsoft, Nokia & HP
- Greatest improvement in recent years of all the companies tested
Volvo Car Corporation’s customer web site has been ranked 4th out of 225 global corporate web sites by the independent international web research company Byte Level.
This is a higher ranking than companies such as Microsoft, Nokia, HP and others. In the most recent survey, Byte Level has tested 225 global corporate web sites across 21 industry categories, illustrating emerging and established best practices.
Volvo Cars’ website has developed steadily. In 2006, the site was in eighth place, last year it was ranked seventh and this year it became number four in Byte Level’s survey.
For Byte Level’s compilation of The 2008 Web Globalization Report Card each web site was analysed according to four criteria:
- Global Navigation: How quickly can visitors find local content?
- Global Consistency: Does the Web site use a global template across all locales?
- Localization: How relevant is the Web site to the Web user’s culture and country?
- Languages: How many languages does the Web site support?
Byte Level, from San Diego, California, points out that Volvo Cars’ website is the one that has undergone the greatest improvement in recent years of all of the companies tested.
The trend shows that the company utilises a common and globally developed design that is based on templates. Navigation is standardised and global, while the content is adapted locally.
“We have succeeded thanks to the fact that we got an early start on the Internet,” says David Holecek, head of Global Interactive Marketing at Volvo Cars. “We also got an early start with a publishing tool and the local markets supported us and took part in building up the site.”
At mid-year, Volvo Cars will be represented on the web with 90 sites in 70 countries and in 36 languages. Seven new local websites will be launched. These are; Peru, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador and the Dominical Republic.
Two new regional websites will also be launched, in Central America and the Caribbean. At the same time, there will also be an Arabic version of the regional customer site in the Middle East.
“When we launch the next generation of Volvo Cars in 2009, we want the visitors to be able to interact more with the site, for example by grading products and subscribing to news articles,” says Holecek. “There will also be additional services focusing specifically on Volvo owners.”
The top 20 global websites:
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Google
-
Wikipedia
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Cisco Systems
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Volvo
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Philips
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Caterpillar
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Netvibes
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Microsoft
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HP
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Nokia
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Deloitte
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American Express
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Adobe
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Lenovo
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Xbox
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Panasonic
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IBM
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3M
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NIVEA
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XING
