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Are They Audi Their Minds?!

While poking through DesignCharts to see if there were any hot new sites that we could showcase, we stumbled across a new Audi site, targeted at the Japanese market.

http://www.factsofaudi.jp

In all honestly, the site is not horrible, but not something we would normally feature on the site, as its not really all that fantastic (but we invite you to check it out for yourself if you have the time to kill.)

In fact, the only reason you are hearing about this site from us is due to how appalled we were at how long the initial load time was. While we didn’t time it down to the second, it was literally between 3-4 minutes, and this is on a Comcast high-speed connection mind you. We even cleared our cache, and made certain it was not a one time fluke.

Now normally, when we see the percent loader sitting relatively idle at 2% after 10 seconds, we will just move along, and forget we ever stopped by, as no website is worth that kind of load time.

But the reason we didn’t navigate elsewhere wasn’t simply the irritating fact that the site launched itself in a full-screen browser window (even though the design did not call for such a window), a window with standard browser controls removed and/or disabled (which is also awesome), but rather the fact that it was indeed Audi, a trusted name in design and inspiration, so if it was truly worth the wait, we didn’t want to chance missing out on a potentially mind-bending experience.

Don’t get us wrong, a team of designers and developers definitely put a good deal of sweat and tears into the fulfillment of this site, which is sad because the sheer load time alone, will most certainly drive away 98% of all potential visitors.

Now obviously web developers have evolved from the late 90’s, and most know better than to ever try to serve up a 3-4 minute load time for an online brochure, regardless of who the client is. So we can’t help but wonder what went wrong, and what compelled a global brand like Audi to face plant in the form vs. function department.

We highly doubt the Japanese are any less of an on-demand culture than we are, and from what we saw in the few sections we checked out, Audi wasn’t giving away free R8’s, so if you think you can offer an explanation, we’d love to hear it. Anyone over at Factory know anything about this site?

44 days ago / / Link

Comment

  1. I’m 100% positive that the only reason this editorial exists is because you were looking for a place to dump your headline (“Are They Audi..”).

    — Ben · Mar 31, 12:23 AM · #

  2. PS. I don’t blame you.

    — Ben · Mar 31, 12:25 AM · #

  3. It seems like they are loading all those raster files from the get-go rather than using xml. Also looks like they are using raster images as overlays here and there and animating them with filters applied. If that’s the case they are just crazy as hell. I’m a student and I know not to do that.

    — Grant Miller · Mar 31, 06:28 AM · #

  4. On a related note, I saw my first R8 near Commons Park yesterday. Friggin’ thing nearly ran three little kids over. But man, sweet ride. Even the kids agreed — as they scrambled for safety.

    — Ryan J. · Mar 31, 08:20 AM · #

  5. The majority of the main metro areas in Japan are been serviced by broadband access with speeds up to 100 Mbps (!) for a cost of approximately US$70/h. From their perspective, Comcast is the one that is Audi their minds for charging us $45 for a 8 Mpbs link.

    — FC · Apr 2, 10:22 AM · #