Chevy’s Voltage Site Design Falls Flat
Yesterday Jen posted a great article on our Marketing Lab's blog, Viget Engage, regarding a new social site recently launched by Chevy. The site, http://www.chevroletvoltage.com, aims to bring people together to discuss and create buzz around their new vehicle, the Volt. After reading through Jen's post it really got me thinking about the design and how, especially in this case, it played a vital role in shaping my expectation of this vehicle before I ever even saw it.
Upon arriving on the site I was immediately confused. First I saw a logo, a prominent video, and a very vague tag line. I then quickly scanned the page looking for something concrete to help explain what exactly this site was. Instead of finding answers, I was left with more questions. What is this site, what's its purpose, and what the heck am I supposed to do? From there my mind quickly jumped to the design and before I knew it I was taken back to 1995 listening to Pearl Jam's Ten in my over-sized flannel shirt and baggy jeans. Needless to say the design is outdated. Not only that, but it also uses almost every web "two point OH(no)" cliché in the book. Excessive rounded corners to the point of distraction, a poorly chosen and washed out color scheme, gradients and drop shadows for the sake of gradients and drop shadows, and social networking badges and callouts everywhere. Not to mention the entire site is built in <gasp>tables</gasp>. In retrospect I'm just thankful I didn't spot the gratuitous wet floor effect or I might have instantly balled up in the fetal position.
Now this is the point where my expectation of this car started to change. The design of this site really started to impact and shape my view of this car — and not in a good way. I've always had the impression that Chevy, and Ford for that matter, were a bit behind the times and lacked innovation in their cars, especially when it came to design. Now, after seeing this site, I started thinking that was the truth. Either that or budget cuts had made it to the design department.
I think Chevy really missed an opportunity here. They had an opportunity to present their product in a positive light, generate some buzz, and create a loyal following. It's particularly unfortunate because the Volt is a cool, well-designed product that is simply presented very poorly. At the very least the design shouldn't get in the way of content and messaging. Sadly, in this case, the design just creates another hurdle for the user.
To me, this site would be a blast to design. With such strong branding and concepts behind the Volt it seems as though the design possibilities would be almost endless. If you were redesigning this site what would you do differently?
Rob,
Great post - thanks for the follow up. Glad to see you agreed! I’m still kind of depressed about the whole thing… doesn’t do much to change perceptions about American automakers. If their designs are behind the times, what does it say about the cars?
Great article and viewpoint on the Chevroletvoltage site. I too was confused when I landed on the page and yes the design leaves much to be desired, especially given the positive design elements of the actual car.
As for a redesign the first thing I’d do is completely rework the structure and messaging. The site feels very content heavy but not in a good way. I get the feeling that interacting with this site would be tiring. Plus there’s no real hierarchy and the amount of space given to the latest blog entries is laughable, especially with all of that meta information swallowing the real content of the posts.
I also think the design should heavily play off the design of the car. Chevy has managed to take a concept car and keep a good amount of the design details when making the production vehicle. That should be played up, promoted.
In the short term, the least they could do is change the page header to something other than “Home”.
I got all I needed from that Page Title: “Home.” Great work, guys, what PR wizard came up with that one. The site is generic, forgettable and a usability joke. But I’m sure some GM VP’s teenage nephew is damn proud of his Web Design Class Final Project.
What a Mistake.
@Phil - Those are great thoughts and I totally agree. The car has some decent attitude and playfulness that would have been nice to see come out in a design.
And WOW, I didn’t catch the page title. Unbelievable. “Home” is a search engines dream. You’ll get all SORTS of useful information! <heavy on the sarcasm >
@Elliott - I’m still laughing…
I love it.
1) Page titles
2) URL’s are completely unreadable and unintuitive
3) Was built with joomla
4) has 1251 w3c validation errors.
5) completely terrible design
This site is literally all that is bad about modern web development rolled into one.
I’d add some high voltage 1px seperators, subtle dark gradient thunder and a shock of Neutraface!
Whichever mid-level Chevrolet magager uttered the phrase “if you build it, they will come” in the marketing meeting where this thing was conceived needs to be slapped upside the head with a cluebat.
Their new site is embarrassing. I completely agree with you all that it is a direct reflection of the car and company. Too bad. It seems that American car companies (and much of the mainstream culture) are having a serious identity crisis. We want the world to “follow us”, but make it difficult for others to take us seriously. Fortunately, American web design has been rockin (special thanks to you all at Viget!), and the rest of American industry could learn a few lessons.
What would I do differently? Make it modern, clean, and totally usable. I would design it similar to the Prius site http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/, at the very least, maybe even go with a Tesla-style site, http://www.teslamotors.com
We need them to lead us into the future, not remind us of poor design of the past.
The soft minty green and baby blue have to go… it screams “creampuff car” and makes me think the poor thing can’t get up big hills. Which I’m sure is entirely untrue, but if you’re an electric car you better convince Americans you can tailgate with the best of them. The actual logo on the car is pretty rad and very sharp, so I’m confused as to why they went all curvalicious with it.
All design decisions aside, launching with zero GOOD content and not even much bad content seems like the biggest mistake.
Wow. Just, wow.
I mean, I’m a high school student doing web design on the side, and even I can tell right off the bat (before I read the article) that the site plain creepy bad.
I gave me a head ache. I mean, what’s the point of putting a blog post preview when it only shows the first 3 words?!?
And what is really sad is that just the word ‘volt’ generates tons of great ideas, none of which were even slightly utilized in the current design.
Epic failure.
For a company that could use a serious win right about now, this isn’t going to help. This says to me that internally there’s very little communication between departments of the company. No marketing department would let this move forward. The divisions between brand and tech are still pretty high in the old school corporate entities. Sounds like some VP thought ‘We need a social network? Call the junior IT Squad. That’s their thing’
Confusing aside, the website is plain ugly. Never seen such ugly promo site, ever, to be honest. What a shame.
This is such a funny topic. I was originally taken back by the new site (which I commented on above), but then I did a simple Google search for “Chevy Volt” and was amazed at what I found. It seems that ALL of the main Volt sites suck pretty bad.
http://www.voltchevrolet.com/ is another terrible throwback; no real style, very little modern design, blocky and boring.
http://gm-volt.com/ is kinda cool (not that bad...) but the barrage of ads makes the company feel desperate, and overall the site is a little chaotic. Don’t get me wrong, ads can be ok on blogs and many other sites, but for some reason these just don’t feel right.
If the new wave of Volt sites is any real indication of Chevy’s current headspace, then I’m a bit concerned for the future of the company. Let evolution take its course.
I think a better question would be “What’s right with it?” At least then we’d all have to look and think a bit harder instead of the relatively simple task of pointing everything that is wrong. And by that I mean everything is wrong.
Aaaargh! Just went and had another look before posting and have noticed that all the footer links open in a new window!
It looks to me like they’ve tried to create a love-child out of all the different social media sites. One word - Frankenstein.
Looks like chevy hired one of the VP’s “web designer” nephews
Sorry kids, It looks like a 4th block Web Design class took the job…
http://www.chevroletvoltage.com/index.php?option=com_joomgallery&func=detail&id=113&Itemid=4
This design just plane sucks. Instead off looking cool and innovative like the car its old, dated, and boring. Nice lime green nav??? Sorry to whoever designed this, but its crap.
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