Hey everybody.
I wanted to send a quick update. My name is Nick and I am the CEO of A07 Online Media.
The team here has been busy since we took over GoodCarBadCar a few months ago. We are excited about the long term potential of the site and have been investing a ton to make it even better. Tim has been awesome to work with and we hope to build on all the hard work he put into the site. We’re also excited that Tim will continue to be a key contributor to the site each month.
Our goal in the short term is simple. Move GoodCarBadCar to a robust platform, clean up the navigation and user experience, remove some of the more aggressive ads and then invest in new data tools to better showcase what is happening in North American automotive sales.
We have made some progress.
The site is now on Wordpress. We went live on Friday 29th of September. All redirects, links and content was moved over so hopefully it is working the way you expect it to. If not, please let us know. If you see any issues or have concerns or feedback, we want to hear about it.
The work isn’t finished. We’re working on a few things that we hope to have finished soon:
- Disqus comments. There is always awesome comments and discussion on GoodCarBadCar and we don’t want to lose any of that history. We plan on continuing the use of Disqus. We are working on implementing it on the site and then porting over all the existing comments and discussion.
- New tables and charts. We are working on updating the tables and charts shown on the site to better showcase the data. For example, check out the Acura Brand Sales Figures and the Acura MDX Sales Figures pages to get a sense for the updates. Eventually all pages should look the same.
As always, we want the site to be an amazing resource to you guys. If you have feedback (good, bad, in the middle) send it our way, we want to hear it. If you have ideas you want to see us implement then fire away.
Thanks
Nick
Hi Nick.
I have feedback. If you want to better showcase the data let the user be able to choose what goes into a sales segment. I want to be able to compare EPA compact, midsize and large cars against each other. Size doesn’t change just because of price, and I don’t care what size the nameplate used to be. Then I want to be able to break out the 3/5 door hatchbacks, 4 door sedans, 2 door coupes and wagons (if the manufacturers break them out). If some folks want marketing size rather than Monrony size, give them a box to check so they can view the data in a less scientific way. Same thing goes for small/standard pickup/SUV.
Less important, but similar, if I think luxury starts at $35K and someone else thinks it starts at $50K we should be able to do that split. That of course is purely subjective, there is no accepted definition and it changes every year with inflation anyway.
David S.
Thanks David. Love the feedback. That’s a pretty big task to technically pull off, but working on something that could work so I’ll share once we have a prototype.
Thanks, Nick.
Upon further reflection there probably doesn’t need to be a luxury segment if you can just sort by column and one of the columns is base MSRP. Just sort ascending or descending to see the vehicles you want to see at top.
David
Everything looks much better overall. But…
While the new tables are more aesthetically pleasing, I do find it a bit harder to decipher the info with their new orientation. I’d rather have to scroll up and down versus left to right and the table cell borders are necessary, vertical and horizontal, with such heavy data. I think the old tables functioned VERY well, just looked outdated. I suggest merging the new look with the old function. Also, the table headers (in blue) should be centered like the data and no aligned left.
I am not too crazy about the mashing up of US and Canada sales, or at least that being the first thing you see. Maybe that should be towards the bottom.
The ads at the top where the hero image usually is is no bueno.
Thanks mate. The main reason I went left to right for months was because you can add infinite years without having to create new tables (because there are only ever 12 months left to right vs years that go way out). Let me play with the old layout and add that to a few pages and get your POV. Give me a week.
As for the summary (both U.S and Canada) being first, hear you, but that’s probably one I will keep as is because most people told us they liked that better. (hope you’re ok but I’m blunt and don’t want to say I am going to change something and not do it).
It was easier with the old columns. They seemed easier to read and change from high to low. Can you not adjust the columns to be wider, or be widened by the user? I also think that the Buick Envision, does not belong on the small SUV list. It should be on the Mid size or small luxury,like the RDX, Edge, Cherokee and Murano. I think David S already made this point overall below.
Otherwise, I LOVE this site…keep up the good work
The columns have been widened already – wow – they were doing a wrap around last week.
Thanks Bob. It seems that people being able to pick and choose which car belongs in which category (or frankly creating their own reports) seems to be a big request. Going to solve that one.
Hi Nick,
Good luck with the site! One of the things I enjoyed about GCBC was the earliest possible reporting of sales for the preceding month. It’s now the 2nd October and there’s no visible sales figures for September – have you discontinued this early reporting?
Hugh
We still want to get it done asap, but this month the figures weren’t released till the 2nd. We will also get faster with some automation. So yeah, we will still hopefully be super fast
So I go to the article about Sept 2017 brand sales, scroll down to Ford, click on it and get transferred to an article that is from 2008. Seriously? I was thinking by clicking on it, I would see sales of individual Ford models from Sept 2017.
There is a weird bug in the table tool we use that messes with the URLs. We figured it out today and we will fix it in coming days. That will fix the link issues going to the wrong spot