New Eos Microsite Launched in the UK

June 10, 2006 – 10:29 pm by Matt Radel
Filed under Rants, Volkswagen Eos

I’ve been pretty excited about the new VW convertible ever since I learned of its upcoming release. I’ve gobbled up all the photos I can, read all the articles and dug around for podcasts.

So I was thrilled when I stumbled across the new Eos microsite, via Volkswagen UK (I’m assuming an American equivalent is in the works). I patiently waited as the site loaded. And loaded. And loaded. Finally, one of the welcome messages that faded elegantly in and out as I waited informed me of this:

2 minutes on broadband?! You’ve got to be kidding! Sorry 56k users, you’re cut off. My usual policy is not to indulge flashturbation such as this and immediately leave the site, but my curiosity got the best of me. Popping open Safari’s activity window told the tale of the tape:

Just by those 20 files, that’s roughly 3.3MB! That’s absurd! I had to see it. Hell, I had to know what they where taking so long to load.

And load it finally did. NOW I’m run through a tutorial on how to use the site. A tutorial that in the same breath tells me how easy to use the site is. Huh? Then why do I need a tutorial?

Pushing back my frustration I run through the tutorial and get into the actual site, which conceptually speaking is killer. You can style your Eos, and drive it through a little area where you can read about all of it’s highlights. You can raise and lower the roof for your trek too. Kinda fun.

But overall, I found the site exhausting. I was turned off by the load time, and didn’t think the wait was really worth it. I love the idea behind the experience, but it just falls short somehow. This is a fast, sexy, sleek and elegant convertible. They achieve the look successfully on the highlight detail pages, but the driving scene doesn’t fit. And it shouldn’t make a faint, weak little puttering sound as it rolls along. It should growl abit. I should get the feeling of driving it with the top down with the wind whiping around me and blaring my stereo. Whoa, is that a giant piece of cake I just drove by? What’s that about?

Still, the site more than serves its purpose, and does a good job of building interest in the product. There is a bit of a fun aspect to it, and I love the highlights (glass roof and ipod connectivity rock my face).

Typographic junkies out there, dig on the use of ligatures:

In the site creator’s defense, you also have to consider the audience. This is a higher end car, so people coming to this site will most likely have broadband and a computer that’s less than 2 years old. So maybe you can get away with a heavy site. But It’s EXTREMELY difficult to justify a 3+ MB download to view the site, no matter who you are. Such bandwidth busting needs to go away. I love Flash, but this is insane. Sites such as this give web standards purists all the ammunition they need to give Flash a bad name. Dial up users, ye be warned…

New Eos Microsite Launched in the UK
June 10, 2006 – 10:29 pm by Matt Radel