Last fall, we discovered that 91 percent of equipment managers use the Internet to access product information and specifications. Five years ago, that number was only 57 percent. We weren't completely surprised, because our website, ConstructionEquipment.com, operates around that assumption. We wanted to build the best site for equipment buyers intent on doing online research for the machines they acquire and manage.
We relaunched ConstructionEquipment.com last month to better meet the needs of equipment managers. We still have the industry's most complete listing of manufacturers and their distributors in our Buyer's Guide database, but we now have deep archives containing all the new-product coverage and evaluative journalism published in Construction Equipment since 2002. Users of the site can search by machine type and find all of our articles on that machine as well as a link to our Buyer's Guide. Another link will take users to our specifications database, Spec Check.
We purchased Spec Check U.S. last month, and this database contains the industry's most up-to-date and deepest listing of specifications for almost 10,000 models in 60 separate categories. The link at ConstructionEquipment.com will take equipment managers to a rich source of machine specification data where they can sort by attribute and compare model specifications side by side. In addition, Spec-Check. com offers an even richer treasure trove of machine specifications.
We want ConstructionEquipment.com to be an equipment-buyer's web-based resource. Equipment managers can access three powerful databases: articles, manufacturer and dealer listings, and machine specifications. But acquisition is but a portion of an equipment-manager's responsibility. Machine management (maintenance, cost control, repair-replace decisions to name a few) takes a considerable amount of time, too.
That's why we've included a section on management, with archived articles from Construction Equipment. Equipment managers will find Prevention Illustrated, Great Managers stories, and the entire collection of Equipment Executive, written by Mike Vorster.
Much has changed on the Internet since 2000, and the new ConstructionEquipment.com provides today's equipment managers with a data-rich resource suitable for the challenges of 2006 and beyond.
