What Car?
Category:
Team Excellence Awards
Product Development Team of the Year
Lift the bonnet of whatcar.com and you’ll find a small, but perfectly formed product team that punch well above their weight. Fundamentally they put users at the heart of their decision making, but have also found a platform for commercial opportunities and editorial excellence. This has led to What Car? continuing to be free for all users, and ranking first for car reviews in what is a competitive market.
Like many publishers, What Car? has traditionally relied on digital advertising to fund its expert journalism. Yields and their direct advertising proposition have remained strong, but the publishing and automotive industries have been pummelled recently by external policy changes. This difficult trading environment (especially within automotive) has led to many of their competitors folding or being sold.
The What Car? team understood the key to their longevity was going to be diversifying revenues, and offering users an even better car buying experience. The product team delivered the largest brand extension in What Car?’s history, in just 2 months.
In October 2024, What Car? launched their new car partnership with Autotrader. Two traditional rivals coming together to offer car buyers a seamless research-to-buy journey was unprecedented.
But how did they get there? It required all hands on from the product team to evaluate their site journeys and content; pinpointing where their in-market researchers would benefit from seeing Autotrader’s pricing and stock availability. Once established, the team worked closely with UX to interweave CTAs and native units which complimented the existing editorial content and showcased the full range of buying options to users.
The team also launched new destination pages for stock and lease deals enabling users to browse all of Autotrader’s deals - something they’ve never been able to offer before.
The team launched the partnership (on time) and the user response was overwhelmingly positive, beating our initial projections and revenue forecasts. However, the team didn’t rest on their laurels - they’ve sought out optimisations and iterations through workshops with Autotrader, analysing the performance of the full user journey (What Car > Autotrader).
The primary aim of this brand extension was to make car buying easier for users, and to diversify revenues so the team could keep creating expert content. The results surpassed all expectations:
