[thelist] New Site - mini

Jamie Bakum jamie.bakum at circle.com
Wed Dec 19 10:46:05 CST 2001


At 10:18 AM -0500 12/19/01, aardvark wrote:

>however, as someone who is *very* interested in getting a Mini (i 
>hate SUVs and tend toward >smaller cars that i can park anywhere), i 
>can tell you i bought a Dell for features (not a G4 cube, >although 
>it's toaster-like design is cool), a $.49 juicer (it's a spigot i 
>bought in Maine 15 years >ago), and i leave Flash and Shockwave (as 
>well as Java and sometimes JS) disabled by default in >my browsers...

I'd say you're in our demo, even with the Dell and having Flash disabled ;-)

<OT car guy talk>
While the new Mini is obviously a stylish car, it backs it up with 
substance. For an MSRP of around 18 grand, you get a car built by BMW 
with decent performance and plenty of standard features (6 airbags, 
engine immobilizer, ABS, tire pressure monitor, a 6 speaker AM/FM/CD, 
etc.). My co-workers have driven the car (still pissed I missed that 
trip) and have raved about the handling and solid feel. It will 
attract people who would buy a $100 juicer, but I'd like to think 
people like Adrian would be attracted by the engineering and 
technology, in addition to the style. </OT car guy talk>

The decision to go with Flash was not made lightly, but given the 
limited availability (less than 20,000 in 2002, many of which I'd 
assume are already spoken for), the desire to make this site both fun 
and interactive and heavily branded *while* providing pretty much 
every fact and bit of info that's available from the manufacturer 
about the car, with our own stats that show traffic to the previous 
(Flash only) site was in the mid-90% percent range in terms of 
viewing Flash 4 or better, it seemed like the correct choice -

On top of that we took some efforts that others have not, in terms of 
allowing forward and back functionality within the site. Having said 
that, I'd like there to be an html version.

And I have no beef with people who make the choice to not download or 
enable Flash. Conversely, I don't, knowing how we've put this 
together and the amount we've poured into it, think I'm asking you to 
do too much by downloading or turning on a small plug-in (and you 
have every right to disagree).

This example is overboard and bit childish, I know, but, to those who 
have said it's unreasonable to require a Flash plug-in to shop for a 
car, I could respond that it's unreasonable for us to require access 
to a computer, an internet connection, and a browser just to shop for 
a car...I mean go kick some tires for goodness' sake!  ;-)

And again, I want to thank everyone for the amount of input and 
discussion received, it really has been invaluable.

Jamie
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