Bobbiebrown Website the Bobbibrown.Co.Uk Website

Bobbiebrown Website

The bobbibrown.co.uk Website

The recent economic crisis has temporarily turned the attention of both public as well as economic agents, both of whom became more focused on implementing savings strategies in the detriment of expansion strategies. In other words, both individuals as well as companies turned their attention to a more protectionist strategy and postponed investments. Yet, such a decision can only be viable within the short-term, and companies need to continually invest in their development and competitive position.

Before the crisis emerged and when investments were still focal in economic actions, one particular must was that of taking one's business online. The virtual environment was no longer an alternative to traditional sales and marketing, but a necessity in the competitive battle. Cosmetics company Bobbi Brown has also created a website through which to promote and sell its items. Yet, this website appears less competitive and appealing in comparison to other websites in the industry, such as the ULTA Beauty Website or the MAC Cosmetics Website. The aim of the current endeavor is that of conducting an evaluation of the bobbiebrown.co.uk website in order to identify flaws and propose solutions. Before launching the analysis however, it is important to become familiarized with the company.

2. The Bobbi Brown Company

The Bobbi Brown Company is owned by makeup creator Bobbi Brown and it was born out of the woman's desire for makeup shades that would highlight the positive features of her aspect. In other words, the company was created due to the limited offer of adequately colored makeup products. Today, Bobbi Brown's life and entrepreneurial philosophy is constructed on the following sentence: "the secret to beauty is simple -- be who you are" (Brown, quoted of the Facebook profile). The Bobbi Brown cosmetics products are being sold in hundreds of stores, but more recently, they are also being sold online.

3. The Bobbi Brown Website

As it has been mentioned throughout the introductory section, taking one's business online is a necessity in this highly technological era. Makeup creator Bobbi Brown has understood this necessity and has created the bobbibrown.co.uk website (on the internet at http://www.bobbibrown.co.uk/) to sell and promote her items. Yet, in order to identify the degree to which Brown will be able to achieve her organizational goals through her website, it is crucial to evaluate the website.

The specialized literature proposes various models in the analysis of a website. Juline E. Millis and Rob Law (2005) argue that the evaluation of the website is an ongoing process which commences in the website development stages and continues throughout the conceptualization and implementation of the website. From the two authors' standpoint, the actual evaluation of a website is to be conducted from four distinct angles: the technical perspective, the marketing perspective, the customer perspective and the internal processes perspective (Millis and Law, 2005).

Lipo Wang, Ke Cheng and Yew Soon Ong (2005) argue that the evaluation of a website should be constructed on the orientation of the website, its content, its bibliographic control, the services it offers, the accuracy of the information and the privacy of the customer data collected.

Regardless of the validity of these models, fact remains that each evaluation process is unique, as every evaluated website is unique. In other words, each website and each evaluation are characterized by unique particularities, such as the desired and actual functionality of the website, the characteristics of the target market, the type of products sold, the industry in which the company activates and so on.

Given this situation, it becomes obvious that the website evaluation models in the specialized literature do not offer the desired answer, but mere structural and informational data based on which each evaluator will construct his own evaluation, considering as well as the unique features of his website. In the particular case of the bobbibrown.co.uk website, the evaluation of the website should revolve around the design of the website, the brand strategy available online, the product, the target market and the social networking as these five elements represent the core of the bobbiebrown.co.uk website and organizational goals.

2.1. The Design

The design of the website is flawed from two main standpoints. First of all, it does not use the entire page. While it might be argued that it does this from ergonomics reasons, such an argument is not viable as the remaining white spaces to the right and down of the page disorient the user. These are some specific pages in the overall website which spread out over an increased surface. When accessing the "Looks and Tips" menu for instance, the retrieved page is longer and the white side is only observable to the right. While this design looks more appealing than the original one, it still offers the sense of incomplete.

A second element in the website design is given by the interface. While it does contain numerous radio buttons to send the user to various menus, the colors and the pictures used fail in creating user appeal. The combination between black and while -- while normally classic and elegant -- is here united with pink, which creates a strong, unappealing contrast. Additionally, the front page product is a lips and eye make up product in red, beige, purple and black shades. Such shades do not appeal to the modern day consumers who strive harder and harder to use make up that enhances their natural beauty. In other words, the strong colors on both the website and well as the front page products might distance the client looking for natural shades.

2.3. The Brand

Large cosmetics companies generally sell their products under various brands. Yet, the bobbibrown.co.uk website offers its products under the single Bobbi Brown brand. This observation is however not stated to present a flaw of the website, but it is a mere assertion. Additionally, it is highly understandable why the smaller size company would sell under a single brand -- its products serve the same needs; they are similar; they address the same target market; but also some company related features, such as the small size of the company and its consequent limited resources. Furthermore, selling under a new brand would exponentially increase risks. Generally speaking, a company can successfully launch sales under a new brand when its current brand and the company itself are reputable and reliable. This means that the consumer's trust in the new product would be high. Yet, in the case of Bobbi Brown, while the company is successful, it has to prove its true value and worth. A newly created brand therefore would not be able to retrieve success from the current brand and company reputation as these are still formed.

Yet, while it is understood and agreed why Bobbi Brown sells her products under a single brand, it is intriguing to assess the current branding strategy. And this is true even more so when the brand is the most important component of any marketing strategy and no website can be successful in attracting new customers and maintain them if it does not emphasize on brand.

Bob Baker (2009) offers a list of nine components of a successful online branding strategy. All these elements will be assessed relative to the bobbibrown.co.uk website in order to identify the strength of the cosmetics company's brand.

1 -- Brand definition -- the website does mention the name of the brand (Bobbie Brown), but it does not clarify what purpose the brand serves.

2 -- Product identification -- from this angle, the Bobbi Brown brand is strongly enforced as the website immediately reveals that the company offers cosmetics products

3 -- Figure head -- the figure head is understood as the real person associated with the brand. From this standpoint as well, the brand strategy is powerful as it presents the story of Bobbi Brown from her first interaction with cosmetics as a child to her currently entrepreneurial occupation.

4 -- Fan-club mentality -- the fan club mentality is in fact a new means of referring to the creation of loyal customers who create word of mouth publicity. The bobbibrown.co.uk website does reveal some applications aimed at achieving this desiderate, materialized in the "What's New," "Looks and Tips" or "Ask an Artist" menus. Unfortunately enough however, the functionality of the "Ask an Artist" menu -- the one which would be best in attracting loyal customers through the sense of personalized customer services -- is limited. From the standpoint of the fan club mentality then, the brand strength is medium as the necessity is understood, but the application is limited.

5 -- Good use of words -- the bobbibrown.co.uk website seems to be under the influence of the "less is more philosophy" in which graphical elements play the pivotal part (Baker, 2009). This means that from the standpoint of communications, the brand is relatively poorly implemented.

6 -- Visual elements to reinforce the identity -- graphical elements fully characterize the bobbiebrown.co.uk website, meaning that this brand strategy creates strength.

7 -- Becoming a one stop destination. A one stop destination is understood as a store that offers a complete range of complementary products. As an example, supermarkets are one stop stores as they allow their customers to purchase everything from food and detergents to power tools and clothes. Within the cosmetics industry, a one stop destination store would be one in which the customer can find anything for personal care, including deodorants, lipsticks, waxing products and so on. The http://www.ulta.co.uk / website is one which can be considered a one stop destination store and can as such offer benchmarking opportunities in the analysis of the bobbiebrown.co.uk website. As the bobbiebrown.co.uk website only sells makeup products, skincare items, fragrances and tools and accessories, it cannot be considered a one stop destination.

8 -- E-mail newsletter -- customers are presented with the ability of leaving their email address with the company and receiving notifications of new products, offers and so on. It is however unclear if the company issues a regular newsletter to be sent to customer or whether it would only be sending fractions of newsletters.

9 -- Visibility through online forums -- the bobbiebrown.co.uk can be followed on Facebook. The brand strength is medium as the company can be followed on the social networking websites, but only on a single one.

2.4. The Product

Bobbi Brown manufactures and sells cosmetics products. The commencements of the product are described in the "About Bobbi" section, in which the makeup artist argues how she always found it difficult to identify the makeup products which actually looked good on her skin. From this desire, a base brown lipstick line was created. The products that followed were diverse and all focused on the idea of creating products which looked good on the skin.

The bobbibrown.co.uk website categorizes its product onto five sets, as follows:

Makeup products

Skincare items

Tools and accessories

Fragrance, and Best sellers.

Each category is represented by a radio button which introduces the user to a specific menu which offers various data on the sought products. Aside the actual products, the website also offers complementary services, such as the "Ask an Artist" option or "Customer Service."

2.5. The Target Market and Social Networking

The website of the cosmetics company does not offer information on the target market is strives to attract. Yet, based on the products it offers, it is safe to assume that it targets women. Furthermore, based on the product on the website's front page, it could be assumed that Bobbi Brown targets teenagers or women going to clubs who use strong dark colors to highlight their features. In fact however, Bobbi Brown targets women of all age categories.

One particular means in which the company reaches its audience is that of communicating with them through other online applications, such as emails or social networks. A social network is generically understood as a virtual community in which members interact. Bobbi Brown can for now only be followed on the Facebook social network at http://www.facebook.com/BobbiBrownUK.

2.6. Other Observations

Aside the already mentioned analyses of the brand, the design, the product or social networking, the bobbibrown.co.uk website reveals two other flaws. These flaws are smaller in importance so as not to comprise whole sections in the analysis, but still sufficiently noteworthy to not be left asides. In this order of ideas, the most notable observations include the following:

a) the bobbibrown.co.uk website and its articles do not reveal the date on which they were created or last modified. This means that potential buyers are unaware if the products sold are still available at the same rates as on the website or if these rates have suffered modification. From a more distant and broad standpoint however, the lack of specific information reduces the credibility to the user.

b) the website does not present factual information on the company, such as the number of employees, annual income statement, company history and so on. The lack of this type of information reduces the trust of the customer, but also minimizes the interest of potential investors.

4. Conclusions and Recommendations

The Bobbi Brown Cosmetics Company was born out of the founder's desire to create an improved version of the already existent cosmetics products available on the market. Given the emergent requirements of the it era, the owner of the cosmetics company found it imperative to launch its products and operations online.

An analysis of a website is a complex endeavor and it is constructed on several elements, such as functionality or designs. Despite the abundance of evaluation models in the specialized literature, fact remains that each website and each company is unique, meaning as such that each evaluation model should be constructed on the particularities of the website and the company. In the case of the bobbibrown.co.uk website, the evaluation model was constructed on five particularities: design, brand, product, target market and social networks. Additionally, the lack of factual information was also addressed.

All of the following recommendations are constructed on the bases of the website flaws identified throughout the previous section.

4.1. Design Recommendations

Based on the flaws identified throughout the previous section, two main recommendations are made:

The usage of the entire page, with the elimination of the white dead spaces, and secondly

The creation of a more appealing and natural, warm colored interface

4.2. Brand Recommendations

The online viewer makes his/her first impression as he/she first enters the website. At this stage, it is crucial that they be met with a strong brand which clearly communicates its aims. In other words, the Bobbi Brown brand could be added a new vision, such as "home of your favorite makeup." The brand could also be improved with the addition on the website of several methods of maintaining loyal customers. As a general marketing rule, loyal customers are more desirable than new customers as they generate lower costs, they generate revenues sustainability and they generate more new customers through word of mouth publicity (Woods, 2003). Given this status quo, some of the measures to increase customer loyalty on the bobbiebrown.co.uk website could include: