I had to rent a car last week for a family trip through the frozen wastelands of Southern Ontario, which meant an even more arduous journey: through the web sites of car rental agencies.

I'm going to single out one in particular - National - but every other site I looked at had its own flavour of misery to inflict on hapless users. (I feel honour-bound to mention that the actual staff were very nice to us and the pickup and dropoff at Pearson were a breeze.)

After I went through the process of giving National the dates and times I wanted to collect and dispose of the car, and then comparing the rates for various sizes and classes of vehicle, I was ready to click the OK button.

Here's the screen I saw:

Twice - twice! - I clicked on the tasty-looking left-hand button that says "go!" in bold, high-contrast letters.

And each time, I had to start again.

Because that button actually isn't for going. It's for stopping and backing up. And if you're paying close attention, you'll notice the words "Go Back" in light text next to it.

Part of the fault was mine - it was late in the day and my mind was on cruise control - but a lot of your users are likely to be in the same state. When they see a big, glossy button that says "go!", years of web surfing have taught them that clicking it will submit the form. And years of driving have taught them that green means moving forward.

So why in hell would National use a big green button to mean "back up"?

The answer, it seems, is National's slogan: "Green means go!" Someone at the company made the decision to extend that branding to their web site's interface elements... including the buttons.

It's a good thing that whoever made that call isn't in charge of vehicle specifications, or the cars' dashboards would consist of nothing but big glowing green "Go!" buttons with the words "Engine is on fire. Please pull over" in tiny type beneath them.

Look, by the time your users are filling out the online rental form, they're committed to the transaction. You don't need to brand the experience to death. You do need to make the process as swift and painless as possible, so your user stays committed through to completion... and feels motivated to come back to the site next time they need a car.

Otherwise, green will mean go.

As in, elsewhere.

Web marketing 1.0 taught companies one simple principle: brand big. Make your brand visible and consistent by spreading your logo and brand message across your site (ideally with a few demonstrations of your web team’s Flash prowess) and throughout the Internet (through the awesome power of banner ads).

That approach worked great – or at least ok – in the era of content push. But while a great Web 1.0 site was as good as the marketing and web team behind it, a good Web 2.0 site is only as good as the people who contribute to it. And that makes all the difference.

You can have the best web developers in the city and the smartest marketers in the country, but if your customers don’t want to play – if they don’t want to put their words, profiles, voices, photos or videos on your site – you’re going to have a hard time creating a Web 2.0 community.

The trick is creating a site where people want to play. For a few lucky brands – like media companies, Nike or Apple – customers care enough about the product or brand that they’re happy to come and talk about your products. For everybody else, the best way to tap the power of Web 2.0 is to create an online community that has intrinsic value, and let the activities of that community reflect positively on the parent company's brand.

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Over at the Jackson Fish Market blog, Hillel Cooperman makes a strong case that "software is an untapped and exponentially powerful medium in which to convey messages and values for brand advertisers." He points to Burger King's videogaming endeavours, but says his argument extends to the web as well.

His examples: Lincoln's My Dream and Vancity's ChangeEverything.ca. And damned if he doesn't get exactly when Vancity (and we) had in mind when we built it:

The Vancity folks understand all that's necessary is an association with the goodwill generated by the site’s existence. In fact, the Vancity folks understand quite a bit - namely that the best way to get continued interest in their site (while accruing value to their brand) is to rely on the community to truly power the site with their content and stories.

We've been referring to that as reflected glory marketing, and it turns the conventional wisdom about sponsoring this kind of initiative on its head.

Supposedly, you maximize your return on your investment in something you're supporting (whether it's a web site, a run for the cure or the new wing of a university library) by slapping your logo everywhere you can, the bigger the better.

But online communities – really interesting ones – are a lot less likely to grow and thrive if you brand a site so heavily that users never feel any ownership over it. Sometimes your best bet is to acknowledge your role and then step out of the way, allowing the success of your community to speak for itself... and reflect well on your brand.

Cooperman (who headed up the user experience crew on Microsoft Windows Vista) compares that approach to the way Lincoln handles My Dream. It's well worth reading... although I have to admit he broke my heart when he revealed that My Dream's gorgeous front page area map is actually statically rendered. (Honestly, it was like finding out the truth about Santa Claus. Deep down, the five-year-old inside me still wants to believe that tag clouds could be this beautiful.)

His key insight is this:

I would bet good money that both Lincoln and VanCity feel that their endeavors were a success. I bet both feel like the exposure they got was relatively cheap compared to other methods they use. But I also claim that if Lincoln saw VanCity’s engagement numbers - average minutes per session, page views per unique visit, repeat visits per user, etc., they would be deeply jealous of what the VanCity folks had accomplished. And I believe this would still be the case despite the fact that MyDream has gotten way more traffic overall (due to Lincoln’s larger ability/effort to drive distribution).

Thanks, Hillel... and thanks, Vancity. We're tremendously proud of this project: both because of what it has achieved, and because of the faith our client has consistently shown in the power of online community.