In 2004, Howard and his user experience team led the development of General Motors' "go forward" B2C web strategy across all its automotive brands. Included were US brands: Chevrolet, Buick, Saab, Cadillac, Saturn, Hummer, Pontiac and GMC as well as a number of global brands such as Holden (Australia), Opel (Germany), Daiwoo (Korea) and Vauxhall (UK). GM's primary goal was to find ways to improve the experience of the online vehicle purchase process and thereby increase customer satisfaction and dealer leads.

Over 100 GM and competitive web sites were benchmarked and a detailed set of recommendations for improvements to user experience were identified. Workshops were conducted throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America with GM's interactive teams and a shared strategy was developed.

Teams across GM were responsible for implementing the recommendations of the project.

Recently, JD Power released revised rankings for US automotive web sites. The "before" to "after" improvements are significant. Note that JD Power scores are calculated based on thousands of customer surveys of consumers taken during their online shopping experience. (See the JD Power press release for more detail on the 2005 results).

Here is a breakdown comparing the differences between these new results and the 2004 results measured before the strategy project. Congratulations to the entire GM team that worked so hard to make this happen!

*JD Power scored 35 sites in 2004 and scored 37 sites in 2005. Added sites are Scion and Suzuki