PSA Peugeot Citroën: Redefining users

User-centric labelling makes a site both friendlier and clearer to navigate.

The Site

PSA Peugeot Citroën, the French car manufacturer, has an extensive corporate website. The navigation groups items under the broad headings of The Group and You Are, which appear on the home page as picture icons. The latter has four sub-sections headed Journalist, Stockholder, Analyst Investor and Candidate.

Within the site a colour-coded split-level tabbed menu allows users to browse within their chosen section or to explore elsewhere.

The Takeaway

The simple device of replacing the standard ‘press office’, ‘investor relations’ and ‘careers’ labels with the more user-centric terms ‘Journalist’, ‘Shareholder’ and ‘Candidate’ makes the site both friendlier and clearer – leaving key target audiences in no doubt about which area best suits their needs.

Similarly, by creating and clearly delineating dedicated areas for private shareholders and institutional investors Peugeot overcomes a common problem of balancing an investor area that might be used by a grey-haired granny or a hard-nosed financial analyst. This again helps users to get straight to the information most relevant to them and enables the company to tailor the content to suit their differing needs.

First published on 20 April, 2006