Ling’s Cars are a car dealership based in the North East of England. The founder, Ling Valentine, is famous for her PR stunts including driving around in a “Nuclear Missile” truck.
The website of Ling’s Cars has been dubbed “the weirdest website on the internet”. The website features karaoke and online games, as well as a shop and an FAQ. During a 2014 interview, Ling claimed that she wanted to “stand out in a sea of ‘same again’ car leasing websites”.
Ling retired from the business in 2020 and it is now run by her staff.
If you take a look at the website now, you see a more ‘conventional’ website. Albeit one with references back to the original one.
What do you think of the new website? Yes, it is a better website but has it lost one of the unique selling points of the business? Are they now going to lose business because it looks similar to other car dealership websites?
When I posted about the change to the website on LinkedIn, a lot of people though that the change made them look generic and had lost the thing that made it “Ling”.
Does your website help you to stand out from your competitors? You don’t need to go all Ling but you need to make sure that in a crowded market, you are the one that potential clients choose.
As an exercise, visit the websites of all of your competitors, take a screenshot and then put all of the images together in a collage. Can you easily pick out your website? Or does it just disappear into a sea of sameness?
