THIS dotcom site is the online hub for the Belgian-based pan-European business specialising in trying to help businesses to optimise the efficiency of their fleet. First impressions of the site are extremely positive once you get beyond the redundant Flash intro (why do companies bother with them?).

Fleet Logistics has mixed the traditional with the quirky with its homepage: so we have a masthead, mixing the company logo with stock ‘at work’ pictures topping a swooping menu bar that takes up much of the page.

Click on each of the 12 buttons in the near-circle and explanatory text appears in the centre. It simultaneously looks good and serves to limit the amount of information that the company can give on topics such as international reporting, outsourcing, selecting suppliers and designing a car policy to easy to digest ‘bites’.

To see the benefits, go to the About Us link where you’re presented with more than 600 words of text without any thought given to keeping the potential customer interested.

The site also falls down in this respect as you go beyond the main menu. In a number of the pieces of text accompanying each menu item there are links to sub-topics such as Fleet Logistics’ FleetCARE product and outsourcing. In each case you’re given a great deal of text to read without much to make it attractive to read.

In ‘Selecting Suppliers’ the case study links to two case studies on unnamed companies, plus a selection of pdfs from the likes of Johnson & Johnson and Philips, providing a good mixture of display styles that is easy on the eye.and therefore the brain.

Information about the company’s European operations offers an example of how information can be presented in this way. Through the Network link you can roam across a map of western Europe, clicking on each country for contact information. Jeremy Bennett

The lowdown

The site: www.fleetlogistics.com

We like: Risks an unusual approach to layout

We don’t like: The Flash intro