Review on Motor Trader Malaysia

Hello and welcome to another entry of our blog, this time on "Review of a local e-Commerce site" with me, *Shu*!

Today, we are going to identify an local e-commerce website and review its features for example type of products, download speed, site design and layout, availability of search engine, shopping carts and cash-out features, color and fonts selections, navigations and other.

First and foremost, the particular website that we are going to review today is

Motor Trader Malaysia (MTM) is a very widely known magazine and online portal as well as forum for car enthusiasts, purchasers and sellers/resellers.


MTM has been in existence for the past 10 years, being started in 1998 and has since been one of the most sought car-related magazines. Alright, enough of the introduction, let's get on with the action! =D

Review of Site
1. Download Speed
Seeing as that MTM does not have downloadable content, we will rate this according to the speed the website and content loads. Regretfully, it may be due to the fact that MTM is often visited by many users, the loading speed for the site is unusually slow (We have waited for at least 1 minute for the page to load, hence the captured loading screen) compared to other e-Commerce websites, for example http://www.airasia.com.my

2. Site Layout and Design
The layout of the website is clear enough to disseminate useful information as well as simple enough to avoid clutter. However, the design of the website still has room for improvement as it is considered too simple and unattractive for current standards.


3. Search Engine
The Search Engine, also pictured above in the "Site Layout and Design" picture, is useful and easy to use, therefore we would like to say that it is a very good search engine that is specific and at the same time simple.

4. Navigation
Most of the navigation is done via a bar in the middle of the site (as pictured above). It is simple and colored accordingly, with the blue section representing general search for everything, the black areas representing specific areas to search (e.g. Prestige cars, motorcycles,etc) and the red areas representing other features such as dealer specific pages, reviews, news, etc.

5. Content
MTM often update new reviews, news, car information, articles oftenly and is a very good source for automotive knowledge. An example to the left is an article regarding a new corporate identity for Perodua, a national car manufacturer.

Conclusion
e-Commerce websites like MTM are a blessing for most of us because without these websites, we would need to purchase printed media which is often much slower than online media.
Therefore, we would like to conclude that although MTM's website is relatively slower compared to other local e-Commerce websites, it is marginally faster than the Government sites (*Well what does this mean, I wonder?*)

The content, ease of use and actual search results and information given has given it a rating of 3/5 from us. We think that the graphics could be improved and maybe the hosting of the website could be done on a better server but other than that, it was a good experience.

We all hope that everyone can visit the website and gain some knowledge from it, do take care now and have a great day! Till next time..

*Shu*, signing off!