Erlend Wilhelmsen

Simple is better

It happened again. The client asked me if we could use Flash for "fluid movements" when we redesigned their e-retailing site. They wanted more animated graphics. In a perfect world, business owners would stop asking to make the web site user experience more complex by introducing movement. Meanwhile, see what usability guru Jacob Nielsen says about moving site elements here.

In my opinion, unless you have a significant budget, such as iHotelier, I would always recommend HTML over Flash for e-retailing web sites. It's very hard and quite time consuming to do Flash sites right. If you have a big budget, see how iHotelier did it. Source: User Interface Engineering

Trademarks in ads

Google® Ads - or so called Pay-Per-Click ads have been a blessing for small companies. Many small online retailers have used well known terms such as Playmate to drive traffic to their stores. It comes as no surprise that the Ninth Cicuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that Playboy® Enterprises can pursue charges that Excite® and Netscape® Communications violated its trademark by selling banner ads triggered by the term: Playmate®. Source: CNET - Web trademark law to be retested

This may be bad news for some small online retailers that have received nice boosts in traffic from using this strategy in their ad programs running with Yahoo!® or Google. As you may know, Google already asked a court to rule on this and its likely that a landmark case is just around the corner.

While many smaller companies may be dissapointed to see this development, there really is no way around it. If trademark law is to be upheld - as it surely will - companies cannot continue to use trademarks owned by other firms as bate for customers. How would you feel if someone used your store name, misrepresenting your brand, and confused your customers?

Learning from the top sites

Some web sites experienced more than 100% visitor gains from December 2002 to 2003. For example, the Jewelry, Luxury Goods & Accessories category is experiencing tremendous growth with e-retailers such as BlueNile breaking records. Source: ComScore

I think this is great news for smaller e-retailers in this market. With the right niche focus and well developed brand identity, smaller companies have a real shot at gaining momentum this year. Naturally, smaller e-retailers can't compete on advertising. However, if you have unique products and the foresight to invest in a site redesign, you may have a real opportunity to grab market share.

If you're a small e-retailer, you can learn from studying the web sites of Coach and Zales. Since it's likely that such companies have already done a fair amount of user experience testing - it's reasonable to assume that you can get some good ideas for improving your website - just from looking at the choices they made. Coupled with your own testing, lessons from such sites may get you in position for the next holiday season.

Wasting marketing budgets

I was recently contacted by a company to discuss their web site redesign initiative. Their marketing team was in charge of the hiring process. I asked if they had a brand summary or brand document. "Nah, we have the marketing plan." It's not the first time I've heard this. However, I must admit it's a bit surprising to hear it from a VP of marketing. After all, marketing is not branding and people running medium sized companies should know this.

Confusing marketing for branding usually means that lots of marketing dollar - getting the message out - is spent before good messages have been crafted. Unfortunately, we see this a lot online. The result is often advertising heavy web sites, conflicting and inconsistent messages, and web pages packed full of content.

For an example of a lot of marketing and little branding, check Adohr Milk Farms web site?

The average American receives or processes more than 5,000 commercial messages a day. Companies that don't pay attention to their branding, will have a difficult time breaking through the noise.

Changing shopping habits

Last year, people who shopped online bought mostly low-priced items, such as books. Judging by the increase in e-retailing through the last quarter of 2004, people seem to be less concerned about making big ticket purchases over the Internet. In fact, according to a study by ComScore indicates that buying patterns are changing. The fastest growing areas of the e-retailing market includes jewelry, furniture, and appliances.

It seems people are becoming more familiar with shopping online and, of course, it helps that more people are now on broadband connections. The improvements in web site user experience made by some e-retailers will make it easier for shoppers to distinguish between the good and the bad. Perhaps 2004 is the year we'll see the Flash intro be replaced by a usable interface. Wishful thinking I'm afraid.