As I've stated previously, one of my main areas of professional and academic focus is usability, a field that is becoming increasingly rich and compelling as technology becomes more integral to our everyday tasks. With some electronics, usability standards can become a matter of life and death, in the truest sense of the phrase, as is the case with GPS units. As a starting point in my survey of corporate blogs, I thought it would be interesting to see if the blogs of companies that produce GPS units reflect their commitment to design and ease of use, as well as what sort of impression the blogs give about the companies. What follows is a brief analysis of the blogs of TomTom and Garmin, two manufacturers of GPS units with which I am familiar.
Upon comparing these companies' blogs with their main websites, one can see that the Garmin blog is, visually, an extension of the company's homepage, with the same header being used on both.
(the Garmin homepage)
(the Garmin blog)
While the TomTom blog's appearance isn't radically different from that of TomTom.com, it does vary enough to easily distinguish it from the company's homepage.
(the TomTom homepage)
(the TomTom blog)
Also of note is that Garmin's blog contains no non-Garmin links, but TomTom's blog features a collection of external links, called "Points of Interest," that visitors might find fun or useful. Furthermore, TomTom's blog has polls and a list of most popular posts, while nothing of the sort appears on the Garmin blog. Just by scanning the layouts of the blogs, one gets the impression that the Garmin blog is very corporate focused, whereas the TomTom blog is more oriented to the visitor and what might be of most interest to him or her.
The initial posts of these blogs also give some idea as to the intended tone, or "flavor" of the sites. Such posts on the TomTom and Garmin blogs indicate that the intended audience is the customer base of the respective companies. Both blogs were also created with the intent to deliver company/product news and to elicit feedback from customers in a fun way. However, both the initial post on TomTom's blog and a later post called "About Club TomTom" (perhaps posted after a redesigning of the site?) emphasize the "fun" aspect of its blog more than the first post on the Garmin blog. The name of the TomTom blog, itself, suggests the leisurely nature of the intended user experience, as well as the company's wish to provide a way for its customers to form a community of sorts. No explicit references to a "community" are made in the first post on the Garmin blog.
Also of note in the "PR aspect" of the blogs is the way in which comments are received. When a visitor tries to comment on a post on the Garmin blog, he or she will see a note saying that "Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until a moderator has approved them," as well as the following warning: "READ BEFORE POSTING: If you have a question about product support, investor relations, or media relations, click on those links. This blog isn’t designed to handle those requests, and your comment will unfortunately go unanswered." At the bottom of the comment box, the visitor sees a reminder: "By submitting a comment for possible posting to the Garmin blog, you specifically grant permission to Garmin to publish your name, story, and/or testimonial, along with any associated photographs or digital images, on the Garmin blog and in Garmin's internal quarterly newsletter, in Garmin's marketing materials, and on the www.garmin.com website." No such warnings appear when a visitor attempts to comment on a post on TomTom's blog, reinforcing the notion that the Garmin and TomTom blogs fall at opposite ends of the corporate-oriented/customer-focused spectrum. Also revealing is the number and frequency of comments left by visitors: of the 149 posts on the Garmin blog published in the past three months, only 5 (3.36%) were commented on, with an average of three comments for each of those posts. While the writers of the TomTom blog post much less often (only 5 posts in the last three months), a greater percentage of the posts were commented on (1 post, or 20% of the posts, which had 2 comments). In other words, for every post published on the Garmin blog in the past three months, there are .1 comments. For every post published on the TomTom blog in the past three months, there are .4 comments.
Of course, in determining the character of a company and its blog, it is imperative to analyze the posts themselves. Here is a breakdown of the word-count statistics for the most recent 10 posts on the blogs:
Garmin:
--Most words: 744
--Least words: 166
--Average word count: 317.3
TomTom:
--Most words: 191
--Least words: 43
--Average word count: 121.9
These statistics suggest that the Garmin blog caters to customers who are sufficiently invested in the brand to read through some relatively lengthy posts, whereas the TomTom blog is written for customers who are, perhaps, more casual users of the products and don't necessarily want to read through long postings. Rather, they prefer that the writers "get to the point" quickly so that they can move on to either the next post or to something else entirely. The posts on both blogs almost always include some visual element, whether it's a picture, a serious of pictures, or a video, with Garmin making more frequent use of video content. The typeface, which is another revealing visual element, used in the Garmin posts seems to be in the Arial family, often considered standard for professional presentations. The writers of the TomTom posts use a font that is similar to Arial, but there is not the great difference between the width and height of the characters that is typically seen in the Arial font family. This choice may have been made in order to convey a more informal tone to the blog.
The topics featured in the blogs also tells a great deal about the company and its intended audience. Although the Garmin blog does discuss the company's products, it also devotes much of its attention to the events in which the products are used, such as the Tour de France and various triathlons. In contrast, the TomTom blog focuses more on products and their features, as well as on company news. Thus, there are far fewer testimonials and endorsements on the TomTom blog compared to Garmin's, further suggesting that Garmin caters to a high-performance customer base who see using Garmin's products as having an edge over the competition. While TomTom users may be competitive in their own right, they are most likely not competitive in ways that are relevant to their use of TomTom's products.
As for overall corporate image (as interpreted by me through my reading of the blogs and through the analysis above):
Garmin: Focuses on meeting the navigation needs of its customers through a variety of products. Strives to maintain its image as a professional, reliable company and an industry leader. Geared toward high-performance users.
TomTom: Focuses on ease of use, convenience, fun, and its customers. Is open to suggestsions and feedback. Tries to be accessible to its customers and to bring them together. Geared toward casual users.
What are your thoughts on what I've just written about? Agree? Disagree? Discuss.
I think Tom Tom "gets" blogging and web 2.0 better than Garmin. G is trying to extend their website and corporate image into the blogosphere with less success.
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