“ igloo has helped us deliver a dynamic and informative web experience for new and existing Mazda customers, enabling them to engage with the brand and connect with other Mazda enthusiasts on a more personal level. „

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Challenge

Mazda’s brief was pretty simple: “to deliver Australia’s best automotive website.” This needed to be achieved by conveying the ‘emotion of motion’ concept to the digital realm; the core of Mazda's Zoom-Zoom brand strategy.

The new site required improved technical infrastructure, a more engaging and informative user experience and facilitation of clear calls to action. This refinement in Information Architecture included a design and navigation overhaul offering easy shortcuts according to intention, such as booking a test drive, finding a dealer and requesting a brochure.

Social media integration was identified as a huge opportunity for Mazda to open up channels of communication with its customers. Prior to the development of the new site, Mazda lacked a social network and community strategy, with no official Mazda Australia presence on Facebook, Flickr or YouTube and a tactical attempt at Twitter.

While many other local and imported car companies were already active in building and managing their own social media communities, a strategic opportunity still existed for Mazda in bringing online communities and their cars together in one place. Mazda and igloo identified that no car manufacturer in Australia had yet put social media at the forefront of their sites.

Such a bold approach was always going to invite a healthy debate during the development of the Mazda digital strategy. Here lay one of the core challenges in creating the new site for Mazda: building a compelling line of attack to invest in social media, whilst also negating the risk that is omnipresent when bringing public comment and contribution so close to a company’s product.

Challenges in the development of the new Mazda site included creating the vast array of content required to deliver the rich user experience defined in the strategy.

“One of the biggest challenges for the Mazda site was to contain all the data within Sitecore. Previously it was built across a number of relational databases, however we wanted to give the client complete control over the data using one simple interface and we knew that Sitecore was more than capable of handling the volume of data required.” said Daniel Graetzer, igloo’s Technical Director.

This was successfully developed and the new site demonstrates a simple and intuitive way to manage all the data all within the Sitecore admin.

Solution

The new Mazda website not only facilitates the investigative stage of purchasing, but also looks to give reasons for the prospective buyer to come back through owner specific information and helpful tips. Layering information about the cars with pictures, videos and comments contributed by the Mazda community gives consumers a 360-degree interaction with a car that cannot be achieved in a dealership environment. A detailed owner login area is in development for future release to specifically assist with vehicle management and maintenance for Mazda drivers.

A key ingredient to the success of the digital strategy was to utilize video as a way of telling a story. The new Mazda Australia site is now packed full of informative footage embracing the global trend towards video. 

Another objective of the campaign was to create a more integrated relationship with both online and offline advertising. To provide a consistent and integrated marketing message, it was important for tactical campaigns to be quickly and easily supported on the digital platform. Full integration of campaigns within Facebook, Twitter feeds, YouTube and Flickr also opened up the opportunities for audiences to engage with the brand and help foster assets for use elsewhere on the site. A number of Flickr images were supplied by Mazda fans for implementation on the website, as well as user-generated video content for the media galleries.

The Mazda mobile website was also launched in mid-July at m.mazda.com.au, utilizing the same Sitecore implementation as the main website.  It allows easy updates and content management, while drawing only on those key features most relevant to a mobile audience to simplify the navigation and user-experience.

Result

While the new website has only been live for two months, the rise in user interactions can already been seen with the increase in vehicle page views up 52%, and brochure requests rising 36% over the same period.

It is worth considering if a site needs to be compatible with mobile devices, or if a mobile version of the site needs to be created. In the case of Mazda, a cut down version of the site was developed for mobile rather than compromising the functionality of the main site so that it would be compatible with mobile devices.

Social Media – Results

Instantly, Mazda found that social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter are the preferred method of contact for a lot of people. Managing these channels has become a full time job and a position was created for a social media representative. Customer service issues and buying questions have been raised and responded to through these channels. The nature of the medium is such that if Mazda are committed to their community, they need to respond quickly and transparently to any issue or enquiry.   All other customer enquiries and submissions are managed and maintained by Sitecore, with the CMS managing content areas throughout the site, including Flash banners.

Resourcing and Content

The greater level of integration with Sitecore has allowed Mazda resources to have more control and ownership of their content, with even flash elements on the site managed by the Sitecore CMS.

A staging server environment allows publishing workflows to be implemented and a range of user permissions across the corporation put in place to manage editing, publishing and updates.

According to Alastair Doak, National Marketing Manager at Mazda Australia, “igloo has helped us deliver a dynamic and informative web experience for new and existing Mazda customers, enabling them to engage with the brand and connect with other Mazda enthusiasts on a more personal level.”

Mobile Website

“In the past, building a mobile version of any website has been rife with challenges, however Sitecore was able to significantly assist with the process for Mazda Australia. Leveraging Sitecore’s device templating and user agent handling was so simple when it came to building a mobile version of Mazda’s website. All the control has stayed within the Sitecore admin, from the content displayed on the site to the device handling,” says Daniel Graetzer, Technical Director, igloo.

 The result is an iPhone and Android optimised user-friendly experience that makes it very easy to access important Mazda information on the go. Visitor statistics have increased dramatically and the feedback has been fantastic.

Technical Description

Solution special ingredients

• Lucene for search
• Google Maps for interactive maps
• Dynamic creation of Flash videos from uploaded pictures in the Sitecore Media Library