FLEET management and style go together like fish and bicycles, so imagine the feeling when you come across the web equivalent of a marlin doing a tail whip on a Mongoose BMX bike.

JCT600 Contracts’ site at www.jct.co.uk/jct achieves this commendable feat. It takes inspiration from the simplicity of volkswagen.co.uk/fleet and audi.co.uk using swathes of white space to highlight key elements of the site for functionality and appearance, laying in front of the visitor the company branding, a touch of Flash and the menu bar.

The site is no one-trick pony. Take advantage of the simple left-hand navigation on the homepage and it is quickly obvious that front-end simplicity belies the mass of news and information. There is the usual web-fodder, About Us, a Contact Us form and the location map. I applied online for a brochure and about half an hour later received a call from the company about my inquiry. Top marks for a prompt response.

But the real power of the site lies in the section called Quotation Services.

Unlike some sites where fleets are expected to register for quotations, this site gives visitors what they want straight away through a rigorous selection process for personal and corporate quotes, a car-versus-cash comparator and company car tax calculator among the options. Each quotation is available through a handful of clicks.

Other offerings include accident claim tracking for registered users, a road test section, weekly news updates and, in pdfs, JCT600’s quarterly newsletter.

There is also a dealer locator allowing service booking. I tested this by trying to find the nearest service centre by postcode. I used a PE12 postcode (in the darkest depths of the Fens) and when requesting the details of the garage called Tears of Sutton Bridge got this error message: Server Error in ‘/’ Application. I tried again with the same garage and got the details of Taylors South Holland Peugeot in Pinchbeck.

I hope this is just a teething problem for a new site. If this gets sorted out and JCT600 adds its ‘coming soon’ functionality, like Used Cars For Sale and its daily rental offering, the site will be a force to be reckoned with.

The lowdown

The site: www.jct.co.uk/jct

We like: TARDIS-like in the amount of information to hand and in a class of its own in design terms

WE don't like: THE odd hiccup in the data searches