Ecommerce Go to a Site

Ecommerce

Go to a site you've never been to before. What is the first thing that strikes you about the site? Is it functionally dominant or aesthetically dominant? Generic, moderately customized, or highly customized? What types of communication does it have? How does it use visual themes to give an impression of the company? Do you think these choices fit with the strategy of the company (or organization)? Repeat this exercise for two more sites.

Baskin Robbins' web site: (http://www.baskinrobbins.com/)is an aesthetically dominant website. It features dancing fruit blast smoothies that are designed to excite interest in the product. It proclaims how the website surfer can enter various contests as well as the ways users can take advantage of other offers to save money at the ice cream store. It is moderately customized in its graphic design, but primarily makes use of fairly conventional links to information about its products such as shakes and smoothies, links that contain tantalizing photographs of the product. The site primarily uses visual themes with punchy, short phrases to encourage visiting off-site stores, since the perishable product of ice cream cannot be purchased over the World Wide Web.

In contrast, an Internet purveyor of a food product that can be purchased online, the gourmet food company Harry and David (http://www.bco.com/)includes more information about its product and company, to encourage trust in the consumer, although its website also has a dominant aesthetic as well as functional element, to encourage the purchase of its luxury goods. It includes links to different company products, such as fruit and chocolates, and baskets for special occasions, although overall its visuals are less youthful and graphically arresting, and are more focused displaying photographs that accurately give information about what the consumer will receive. Another food site, that of a chain restaurant in-and-Out Burger, (http://www.in-n-out.com/)is perhaps the most aesthetically dominant, as it does not feature many photographs of the food at all, although it does include general links about the company's history and menu. It primarily creates interest about the regional California chain through old-fashioned images of burgers and fries, stressing the customized, all-natural nature of the good food offered at the stores.

Map the 7Cs for salon.com. Do the same for the New York Times website. How do these maps differ? How are they similar? Now map the 7Cs for a retail site, such as buy.com. Compare the three maps.

Salon.com

Cost: A relatively low cost, functional website. Information available to all surfers.

Convenience: Easily searchable.

Communication: News headlines well-displayed.

Community: Surfers can post reactions to various articles online.

Coordination: Site fairly easy to surf and coordinated between different sections.

Customization: Little customization allowed for various users.

Collaboration: Links to other articles accessible on Salon.com.

New York Times

Cost: A relatively low cost, functional website. Most recent information available to all registered surfers, charges fee for premium material and archived articles.