10 fastest and slowest premium automotive brand websites in Europe

Report

Are top premium car brands burning their digital marketing budgets?

6 out of 10 premium car brands are not aware that fast loading website drive more sales - this is the conclusion of the report prepared by Reffine. However, there are four brands that have realized that they are probably loosing conversions and have worked really hard to optimize their websites. The rest of analyzed brands appear not to be concerned with slow websites at all. This report clearly shows that fast cars do not go hand in hand with a fast website.

“Historically, automotive businesses have placed greater emphasis on fixing problems at brick-and-mortar stores then issues facing their websites and, as a result, have quietly lost potential customers. If a car dealership had a malfunctioning set of entrance doors that caused every 15th customer to be turned away, the dealership manager would immediately intervene to fix it. On the internet, you don’t see the customer hitting their nose on the door. They won’t write a complaint, they won’t go to the dealership director to complain. They’ll just leave the slow-performing website,” says Adam Wardach, CEO of Reffine.

All premium car brands have longer loading times than standard brands. Often, this happens because automotive marketing typically relies on high-quality photos of vehicles that are supposed to catch the customer’s eye.

However, some of these brands have tried to optimize their sites so that the loading time is as short as possible. This may be due to the fact that these brands are aware that a website is an essential part of the sales process and long load times negatively affect sales.

Therefore, it’s worth noting the effort made by of Lexus and Bentley, where webmasters improved their Good Experience metrics by 4 and 8% points, respectively over a six-month period. To better understand the result of such attempts and the current status of website performance in the automotive industry, Reffine analyzed the websites of 10 premium car brands in the European market: Lexus, Infiniti, Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari, Audi, Cadillac, Bentley, BMW, and Aston Martin.

Core Web Vitals - what is all about?

The report is based on Core Web Vitals where tere are three factors every digital manager has to keep in mind. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) indicates the amount of time it takes for a page to load from a user’s perspective. First Input Delay (FID) indicates the speed with which your audience can begin to interact and use the page. Finally, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) quantifies the stability of the page during the loading process.

Nailing these three metrics obviously has a major impact on the user experience. Users who try to load a page, only to be stuck waiting for the content they’re trying to read. And once the page fully loads, they either can’t click on anything or the layout shifts unpredictably. This is the moment when users tend to go elsewhere in search of a better option.

„Core Web Vitals metrics hold immense importance. They effectively quantify the most important aspects a website’s user experience. Their coverage starts with the amount of time it takes to show meaningful content on each page and ends with how „snappy” interacting with it feels.” - says Tomasz Badowiec, CTO at Reffine.

Reffine - a new MarTech disruptor?

With 15 years of experience optimizing website efficiency for global enterprises, including renowned brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, and Mazda, Reffine understands the profound impact website metrics have on businesses. It’s challenging for large corporations to monitor multiple websites, as they have to take variables like firewalls, local internet setups, and server location into consideration. „This is where the idea for Reffine Insights originated. We aimed to provide genuine insights into the user experience and compare it against market competitors.", explains Adam Wardach.

Reffine Insights not only shows the overall users’ experience on brand’s websites and their competitor landscape, but also provides meaningful information on how much money the brand potentially looses from slow loading website. Reffine engineers have developed an algorithm that distinguishes the percentage of bounce rate coming from a slow site and calculates the amount of marketing budget burned and thus a Digital Manager can react quickly as he gets clear information where’s the problem with conversions.

The solution is addressed to digital managers in global enterprises for whom their website is an important sales and marketing channel, but also to interactive agencies for which a well-performing website of their clients is important.

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