MotorTrend.com Website Design Review

ARTICLE SNIPPET - MotorTrend.com Demonstrates That a Mequoda Internet Hub Can Be Informative, Attractive, Engaging and Smart, While Linking Visitors to Both its Own Satellite Sites and Those of Other Publishers

I started reading Motor Trend, Car & Driver, and Road & Track magazines back in junior high school. My lust for fast, flashy sports cars began about the same time my hormones attacked me. That Freudian connection, which I was unaware of at the time, has not been lost on automobile manufacturers or car magazine publishers. Cars, youth, sex, speed and power all augur well for commerce. It wasn't until many years later that it dawned on me exactly who subscribes to publications about exotic, expensive automobiles. It's not the rich guys who already own and drive them; it's the rest of us poor schlubs who want to. Magazines like Motor Trend help us indulge our fantasies and get us closer to our dreams.

So much for Psychology 101 and my misspent youth. Today's question is, Who reads Motor Trend online and why? That turns out to be the guy researching a car to buy (or getting closer to his dreams of buying one). And what's in it for the publisher to give away so much free content? Unlike Consumer Reports magazine, where access to the online content costs the same as a subscription to the print publication, MotorTrend.com is free. Well, almost free. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's kick the tires at MotorTrend.com and run it through the 14 Mequoda Website Design Criteria to see how it performs.

• Browse, search, sign up for the free email newsletter, watch a video, or contribute to a discussion forum—they're all quite easy to do on this site.
• With its 11 discussion forums, there is new user-contributed content available at MotorTrend.com every day.
• MotorTrend.com is a very busy site, but does not overwhelm or intimidate.
• As a card-carrying member of the terminally clumsy set, I discourage the use of drop-down menus and small hypertext links and buttons in website design.
• This site provides an encyclopedia's worth of free information, yet finds ways to monetize (make money from) the user with links to other website properties.

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