Thousands of motorcycle and scooter riders in 88 countries voted for the 2007 Motorcycle Bloggers International Riders Choice Awards, and the results were announced today. Scooters, scooterists, and scooter manufacturers took several awards, including:
- Best motorcycle or scooter blog: Scooter in the Sticks
- Best new-in-2006 motor scooter: Piaggio MP3
- Wish we’d thought of that: Piaggio MP3
VespaUSA won second prize for “worst manufacturer website” and the Gilera Fuoco 500 won second for “best concept motorcycle or scooter.”
Congratulations to Steve Williams from Scooter in the Sticks, who beat an amazing amount of competition from motorcycle and scooter blogs to come out on top, he deserved it, SITS is among the most insightful and personal blogs, in any field.
Most websites leave much to be desired, but I think the VUSA site does what it’s supposed to do. Any specifics as to what’s wrong? Besides dealer directory not being updated enough?
I actually nominated it, but apparently plenty of other people feel the same way…
It does the bare minimum that a corporate webpage should, but it should do so much more. The “news” is always months old, and always boring marketing info rather than actual “news”, the dealer directory is out of date, and they’ve had many good ideas (vespatition, the two blogs, the Vespa World Club, etc) and abandoned them. Modern Vespa users have reported that when they used the online form to order a catalog, it took three months for the catalog to arrive, If you’re selling a product, online leads should be followed up immediately, especially for a big-ticket impulse buy like a scooter.
The scooter info is fairly limited, too, there’s a couple pictures and a PDF catalog, but the specs aren’t very detailed, they could do so much more with that like a 360° animation or video.
If nothing else, a large number of voters were presumably bloggers that shared my pain that the “official” blogs had so much potential, but were abandoned by the company.
I remember asking for info when the GT was first released. Never got anything.
If a website is a door into a company, then the Vespa USA website is a chunk of 2×4 somebody sawed off to prop the door open, rather than a doorman who greets you nicely and directs you to the 3rd floor to get just the information you were looking for.
Since Vespa positions itself as a “luxury” brand, it shouldn’t have such a pedestrian website.
The company was/is going through many growing pains, however, brochure inquiries were also forwarded to dealers in the respected ZIP codes. The stores I ran always tried to contact, if no phone was given, “unable to contact” box was checked and we moved on to the people who were actually interested in buying something. The brochures were expensive enough to buy from PUSA, adding postage to “Auto show brochure bag stuffers” was spinning our wheels. Ask any of my former part-timers how much time and effort was wasted. Visiting the store to get your brochure is as paramount a business strategy as carrying monthly/quarterly magazines, you might just buy that quart of oil, or helmet/gloves/raingear/jacket/glasses, etc. that keeps the store in business. Or rebuild parts for your existing bike, but that dot-com savings of 50 cents to a buck really seems like most people are actually accomplishing something! Actually looking at/sitting on/test-driving that model of interest doesn’t hurt either!
Are you sure you ran a Vespa dealership, because you sound competent!
Admittedly, I was only a tire-kicker but someone, somewhere should have gotten back to me. It’s easy for Piaggio to shuffle responsibility back to the dealer — hell, they’re masters at it. But in my case, maybe Piaggio USA should have sent a brochure, knowing that I wasn’t a likely candidate for their dealership to pursue? Sales and marketing are two different things and should be approached differently.
Also, I can’t let i”The company was/is going through many growing pains” go without comment. Any “pains” Piaggio is experiencing are almost entirely self-inflicted. Sorry. No excuses after 6 years in the market.
Granted, I’m just your average disgruntled internet crank but we both know there’s a grain of truth in what I’m saying…