Assignment 6

Market Analysis

William Han 5/13/11

About.com/autos and similar article-based websites.

Strengths:

This website specifically has a wide variety of information about various car-related topics, including car repair, auto buying advice, and automotive basics. In addition to articles and photos, the site also hosts a numerous number of videos as well as other media, whether for car reviews or car repair. Additionally, they are able to offer a “shopping” service in which readers would be able to purchase relevant items to the article they are reading. They have interesting articles for both average consumers (such as car reviews) as well as articles for car enthusiasts (such as a subsection focusing on Corvettes). Furthermore, the information presented is of a very high quality and informative

The typical advantage for these sorts of websites is the high quality information that is produced. Because sites such as About.com/autos hire experts to write articles, the information that is on there is easy to read and very informative.

Weaknesses:

The main weakness with About.com/autos is the inability to reach the “long tail” of the market as well as the lack of a strong community. For example, the articles that are written are very descriptive and helpful, yet they only cover the most common auto questions that would typically be asked by consumers. They typically do not particularly appeal to car enthusiasts. For example, there is a subsection about Mustangs, yet there are no subsections regarding Nissan Skylines or BMW M3’s. The other issue is that there is little to no contribution from readers as articles are all expert written and therefore there is a lack of a strong community.

Correspondingly, the typical weaknesses for these sorts of automotive websites are the limited amount of information that they are able to present as well as the lack of a reader community due to the limited involvement of readers.

http://www.trustmymechanic.com/forum/

Strengths:

The biggest strength of this website is its vast breadth and depth of car repair information as well as its ability to capture the “long tail” of car repair. One could ask a question about an obscure vehicle, and conceivably someone may be able to answer it. Many users both answer as well as ask questions on this forum, making it a thriving community. Responses to repair questions are often prompt, and often one can find the answer to his questions by searching to see if it has already been asked and answered.

The typical strengths of automotive repair forums are that questions are answered promptly due to a large community, there is a strong sense of community, and one can find a lot of information on these websites.

Weaknesses:

The downside of having the content be user-generated is that it is hard to know if the information on the forums is accurate. The content can often be of questionable validity. It is also difficult to search through threads to find the answer one is looking for, as the answer may not be in the first response in a thread. A downside specific to trustmymechanic.com is that it is a poorly organized website, with only one general forum in which to ask car repair questions. Separate subforums for different makes and models would have been much cleaner.

http://www.automotiveforums.com/

Strengths:

This is a great automotive forum that covers many different topics of cars. It is very well organized, with many different subforums effectively fulfilling their purposes. There is a plethora of information that sometimes is detailed and certainly covers a great breadth of topics. There are subforums for each major brand of car. It also seemingly has a very strong community, with over 650,000 members and over one million topics. It also has articles on car repair, reviews, and advice. Automotiveforums.com represents the pinnacle of similar internet forums, having such a strong community. Any questions asked are promptly replied to.

Weaknesses:

As an internet forum, automotiveforums.com still suffers from a lack of credibility and a difficulty of finding specific information. Although it is well organized and has a search function, it is still difficult to find information that may be buried in a specific thread. Furthermore, the car repair section seems to be underutilized.

The Car Culture’s Advantage

My website creates a forum similar to www.automotiveforums.com, but by adding a wiki section it also alleviates the main issues of forum-style websites. The creation of these two separate aspects allows information and content about cars to be stored and organized separately from the discussion of cars. This makes it much easier for information to be accessed as well as create a cleaner area for car discussion. Furthermore, the wiki allows for greater quality of information (especially for car repair), as the information on the wiki will hopefully be generated by experts (similar to wikipedia). This gives it an advantage over traditional sites such as about.com/autos as well.