Business Research Assignment: Analysing Website of LINGsCAR
Question
Task: For this business research assignment, select a company’s website and prepare a detailed analysis on the website discussing the issues and improvements that can be done.
Answer
Executive Summary
This report on business research assignment is based on the efficiency of the website lingscar.com and the ways the website can be improved. This report contains a detailed analysis of the website’s technicality, its aesthetics, usability and improvement that are needed and can be helpful. The report at first starts with an introduction about the purpose of a good website, then it gives details on the methods used, followed by a long discussion on the company, its website, the problems it has, the improvement that can be done and the resources that will be needed for the improvements and finally a brief recommendation on how to maintain a good website. This is followed by a small conclusion which summarises the whole report.
Introduction
In the present times of rapid digitization and technological advancements, having a well presented website that captures the attention of customers very quickly is necessary. As a time when the whole world is going online, maintaining a good online image is important for any website and their company (Beroual, et al. 2020).
This report is on the company LINGsCAR and its website lingscar.com. This report is written as an analysis on the website design, its working layout, the aesthetics and the convenience of surfing.
This report also contains a few of the recommendations that can help the website become better and more user friendly, helping the company transition in the digital world of the modern times.
Methods
For this report the website was thoroughly examined according to the present standards. The information presented in the report has been collected from both primary and secondary resources.
The primary resources include a detailed analysis on the technicalities of the company's website and the program and software they use to run the website and also a few suggestions from the head of the company about the changes that she wants.
The secondary resources include a survey from the people visiting the website and suggestions from existing customers about how the aesthetics of the website can be improved for creating a better online presence. Along with the survey the secondary resources also include a bunch of journals on technology, books on web development and graphics designing, websites that are professional and ahead in this field. All of the information presented in this report has been listed in the bibliography.
Discussions
Background Information of the Company
The website lingscar.com has been made for LINGsCAR which is one of the leading car leasing companies of the United Kingdom. The company rents out cars for a fixed period of time on contact. This is a cost-effective method that helps in providing an affordable alternative to vehicle purchases. This provides the customer a cheaper alternative to buying a car and generates income for the company from leasing the car again and again or selling them at auctions ("Personal & Business Car Leasing | LINGsCARS", 2021).
Purpose of having a Good Website
We are living in the middle of the 21st Century, and in this era keeping up with the latest trends are very important. The present world is filled with information of various kinds. There are always so many options out in the digital world to choose from (Comeaux, 2017). So to keep up with this fast pace, having a good online presence is important and for that effective strategies of marketing should be implemented. One of such good, effective and affordable marketing techniques is having a good looking website.
Every business nowadays needs a website. A website shows the audience what the company is about and gives them the perception of the quality of services the company provides. This impression that a website has on the viewer either makes them stay and opt in to use the services that the business has to offer or leave the page with a bad image of the company (Frain, 2020). The website is also responsible for the optimization of the search engine that can be very helpful in increasing the popularity of the company online. It also helps in providing a customer service to the viewer and helps in building a concrete form of trust with the consumers. Along with all this the website helps in creating a consistency and familiarity among the audience and the consumers of the website. Every successful company or start-ups are opting for a good website design and online presence (Ilamsyah, et al, 2020).
Effectiveness of the Company’s Website
The website lingscar.com has been around for quite a decade now. The business of the company has grown very well over the years. Once the website is accessed the users are greeted with a bunch of psychedelic texts and a design that has the nineties aesthetics highlighting consumerism. The website has a design that is very basic and filled with videos and GIFs of the employees and the owners. It is clear from the design that the website was created using basic html language and not much attention was given to modernise it according to present standards (Stig, 2017).
There is a long list of cars that are available for lease right after the basic design of the top part of the website ends. The bottom part is almost empty except for the list that is placed on the left side. This whole design is very basic and has too much information that is placed in ways that make the website look very uncomfortable ("Personal & Business Car Leasing | LINGsCARS", 2021). The design and the strategy that the website follows would have sufficed previously but in the present times that can be a bit of a problem. So there are many changes that can be done to make the website better.
Improvements Needed
While the look of the website resembling the nineties era of consumerism has a good effect on the viewers there are still many improvements that can be done to the website. The first thing that can be really helpful is to have a convenient way of navigation (Stig, 2017). To make the customers stay in the website it is important to have a form of navigation technique that is easier to access. The design for navigation should be simple but convenient.
The customer should be able to access what they want easily and fast (Morozovet al., 2020). In the present times the consumers access a website from different kinds of devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers. To have a positive reach on the website it has to be made sure that the customers accessing the website have a positive experience from any kind of deceive.
The website should be designed to adapt itself according to the devices it is on. Next is that the website should have a consistent style. As analysed the website follows a styles format that resembles the culture of the nineties. However the look seems to be very old and does not go with the modern aesthetics. So the design should be revamped into something that is a little modern and at the same time it should retain the nineties aesthetics as this is what the company is known for to its customer. There are many videos and GIFs throughout the website but unfortunately they do not serve any purpose for its overall engagement. Important changes should be made in this part and videos that are relevant to the company should be integrated into the design (Webfx, 2020).There should be balance between the texts and the videos or images that are being used.
To have a good engagement and to make sure that the customers stay on the site the visual element should be used purposefully. The website has a problem of good copywriting and that should be changed. Writing short, crisp and quality copy can help in grabbing the attention of viewers very quickly (Webfx, 2020). The copy should be so well written that it makes the viewer more interested in exploring the services that the company has to offer. Another important tool that is missing from the website is a call-to-action button.This button should be integrated in the website’s design so that the customers can easily navigate to the next steps of the services offered (Nogueira, et al., 2019). This button should be designed in a color combination that matches the nineties aesthetics of the website. Finally the last problem that the website has is its slow response time. The response time of the website decides on whether the customer will stay on the site or not. In the present era slow loading pages are a big problem and can make the viewer lose their interests.So to make sure that the viewer is engaged the page should be highly optimised. This will help the page in maintaining a decent speed (Webfx, 2020).
The Impact of the New Design
The changes will revamp the old design and give a new look to the website. At first it will have a strong navigation system making the content of the site more accessible to the viewers and the customers. Then the website will be made adaptable. This will help it to be easily accessible across all forms of devices. The modern look of the website will appeal to a younger audience, and the touch of the nineties aesthetics will give the viewers a feeling of nostalgia. This would make them stay more on the site (Perdomo, 2017). The visuals will help in capturing the attention of the customers very easily and will make them stay. The copy writings will help in making the customer more interested in the services the company has to offer. The call-to action button will make the navigation more convenient. Finally the response time and the speed of the website will also be optimized therefore making it more responsive.
Recommendations
The present website and its design of LINGsCARis okay and just for show. Its design feels obnoxious and loud. There are too many elements and the design's aesthetics makes the viewer feel uncomfortable. There are so many elements that the website feels crowded and invokes feelings of confusion in the minds of the viewer. These elements make the website lose the purpose for what it was created for. The changes that are going to be made will make the website appealing and help in creating more engagements. These changes will not only change the aesthetics of the website but also help in the creation of a better and more responsive page.
Conclusion
LINGsCAR is a good company and one of the most leading one in the car leasing business of the United Kingdom. As the survey says their services are really good and people like them, the problem is their website and the way it has been designed. With the new ideas proposed and the change of the design aesthetics, hopefully the website will turn out to be a good one.
References
Beroual, O., Guérin, F., &Hallé, S. (2020, June).Detecting responsive web design bugs with declarative specifications.In International Conference on Web Engineering (pp. 3-18).Springer, Cham.
Comeaux, D. J. (2017).Web design trends in academic libraries—A longitudinal study.Journal of Web Librarianship, 11(1), 1-15.
Frain, B. (2020). Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS: Develop future-proof responsive websites using the latest HTML5 and CSS techniques. Packt Publishing Ltd.
Ilamsyah, I., Wulandari, R., &Fahreza, R. R. (2020).Web Design Visual Comic Communication As A Visual Based Learning Media.IAIC Transactions on Sustainable Digital Innovation (ITSDI), 2(1), 1-10.
Morozov, K., Sidenko, I. V., Kondratenko, G. V., &Kondratenko, Y. P. (2020). Increasing Web-Design Effectiveness Based on Backendless Architecture.Business research assignment In COLINS (pp. 894-905).
Nogueira, T. D. C., Ferreira, D. J., &Ullmann, M. R. D. (2019, October).Impact of accessibility and usability barriers on the emotions of blind users in responsive web design.In Proceedings of the 18th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-8).
Perdomo, E. G., Cardozo, M. T., Perdomo, C. C., &Serrezuela, R. R. (2017). A Review of the User Based Web Design: Usability and Information Architecture. International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, 12(21), 11685-11690.
Personal & Business Car Leasing | LINGsCARS. (2021). Retrieved 17 May 2021, from https://www.lingscars.com/
Stig, D. (2017). Ling’s Cars: 3 Reasons Why the Worst Website on the Internet is Actually Genius.
Retrieved 17 May 2021, from https://thewhitelabelagency.com/lings-cars-3-reasons-worst-website-internet-actually-genius/ Webfx, W. (2020). Why Is Web Design Important? | 6 Reasons to Invest in Site Design. Retrieved 17 May 2021, from https://www.webfx.com/web-design/why-is-web-design-important.html#:~:text=Web%20design%20is%20important%20because,your%20leads%20on%20your%20page.
Appendixes
Appendix 1
Survey
Appendix 2
A Financial Report
(Source:Webfx, 2020)
Appendix 3
A Report on Website Traffic
