Hot Wheels Essay Research Paper INTRODUCTIONPROBLEMI researched

Hot Wheels Essay, Research Paper

INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM

I researched which Hot Wheels web sites are the best for the adult collector.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this report is to discuss the findings of my research.

SCOPE

The scope of this research was limited to Internet congestion, my full time job, other homework, and lack of time.

BACKGROUND

Many people collect different things. Coins, stamps, and baseball cards just name a few. However, a little die cast car stands above all others in collectables. Hot Wheels started out as a child s toy. Hot Wheels are now one of the most highly sought and highly traded and sold collectable on the market. My fascination with this topic stems from the fact that adults are the primary collectors of these cars. My roommate, for instance, has over three hundred of these cars. They range from the typical small pocket sized car all the way to a car that is 1:18 scale of a full sized car.

METHODOLOGY

I broke this research down into distinct questions regarding website loading times, content quality of the web sites, and to whom the sites were targeted. With Hot Wheels content quality is a big issue because depending on how a site looks you can generally tell if the collector is serious or just looking to make a quick dollar. My key search word was Hot Wheels. I used only one search engine and that was Google.com. When I typed in Hot Wheels it took 4.3 seconds to find over 100,000 sites relating to Hot Wheels. Some of the questions I originally had were only geared to one site at a time. Which sites offered the best variety of merchandise would have made this paper unimaginable in length. The mere thought of having to explain those findings would have created at least twenty more pages of research.

FINDINGS

QUESTION 1. HOW EASY WAS THE SITE IN TERMS OF NAVIGATION.

Five (20%) of the web sites were in the 1-3 or bad category, while 3 (12%) were in the 4-7 or fair category, and lastly 17 (68%) were in the 8-10 or good category. The vast majority of the sites were easy to move around in.

The overall design of the sites in the good category was excellent and the cars and links were easy to find. The other 8 (32%), which fell in the lower categories, were either hastily put together or put together by inexperienced people. I had a difficult time finding what I was looking for in these sites. Other problems for these sites included no pictures of the cars and sometimes information not pertaining to Hot Wheels.

QUESTION 2. HOW WAS THE QUALITY OF GRAPHICS ON EACH SITE.

Ten (40%) rated in the 1-3 or bad category, 12 (48%) rated in the 4-7 or fair category, and 3 (12%) finished in the 8-10 or good category. This study found that the 3 that finished in the good category were every elaborate sites with great pictures. This also included the Hot Wheels home page. (See Figure 1.)

While this question may seem a bit subjective, graphics quality is very relevant to the serious collector. They want to see how the cars look before making any decisions on purchasing or trading with this particular site or person. The sites that did poorly had very few pictures and mostly out of focus visuals.

QUESTION 3. HOW OFTEN IS THE WEBSITE UPDATED.

Five (20%) rated in the not at all category, 3 (12%) were in the not very often category, 16 (64%) were updated often, and 1 (4%) was updated very often. The lone site that was updated very often was the official Hot Wheels homepage.

In this question we can determine how serious the collector is about the hobby. The 5 that were never updated had cars from 1999 that were just ordinary cars. The 16 that were updated often demonstrated to me the site was serious in sharing what they had in their inventory. I determined this question by looking for a date that this site was last updated. All but one site had this information on their web page.

QUESTION 4. HOW FAST DID THE SITE LOAD.

Fifteen (60%) of the web sites loaded within 30 seconds, 9 (36%) loaded within 40 seconds, while 1 (4%) went well past 60 seconds to load. The site that took the longest to load was, again, the Hot Wheels homepage. The other sites were not as graphical in design and loaded much more quickly.(See Figure 2.)

I was impressed with the overall loading speed of the 24 sites that loaded within 40 seconds. I was a bit frustrated with the wait for the Hot Wheels homepage; however, the quality of that page makes up the difference. Net congestion had a lot to do with this question. I had to test the sites a number of times because of net congestion and I also had to clean out my Internet files to assure an accurate timing.

QUESTION 5. WHAT AGE GROUP DOES THE SITE SEEM TO TARGET.

Three (12%) of the web sites seemed to cater to the 10-18 age bracket, while 22 (88%) fell into the over 19 age group.

The 3 web sites that ended up in the 10-18 age group looked to have been put up by someone in that age group. A parent for an 8-year-old boy, for example, put one site together. Not only were there Hot Wheels in that site but also pictures of the boy racing go-carts as well. The other 22 sites were put up by adults interested in either collecting or trading their cars with other enthusiasts.

QUESTION 6. HOW MANY LINKS DOES EAC

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