Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Gucci.com revisited
Someone calling himself (or herself) ToyMaker posted a long comment on my post about the Script.aculo.us based Gucci.com site relaunch. ToyMaker’s points about its usability flaws are valid and well-reasoned, but it got me thinking about the nature of luxury brand web sites and when is it appropriate for style to trump usability. The me of a few years ago would have argued “Never!” but now I’m not so sure.
Think about the real world “usability” of the Gucci brand. Gucci products are difficult to find. They can only be found in highly upscale boutiques or department stores, and for vast swathes of the world there is simply zero availability whatsoever. If they were concerned about “usability”, they’d have a store on every street corner. Once you’re in the store, there are very few products on the actual shelves. They’re displayed mainly for visual appeal. If they were concerned about usability, they’d put every size of every product out on the sales floor. Many products are in locked cases. You need to ask for assistance to try things on. This wouldn’t be the case if Gucci were concerned with “usability”. You have to ask a salesperson for prices on many items – that’s terrible usability!
My point is that there is much more to the shopping experience than getting in, getting what you want, and getting out – especially when dealing with luxury brands. Buying a luxury product is an inherently illogical process. No one – not a single person on Earth – needs anything Gucci sells. To convince someone to buy such a vastly overpriced product, it’s important to convince them the actual act of purchasing that item is an very special experience. In the real world, this means sparse boutiques, exclusive locations, and hands-on sales personnel. All these things slow down the purchase process, but are essential in “selling the experience”. In the virtual world, this can mean long load times, odd page layouts, and sometimes confusing navigation.
Verdict: Yes, style – or, more accurately, “story” – can sometimes trump usability and standardization, for certain products. No, Gucci.com’s usability is not broken. Users may be slowed down by certain aspects of the site’s design. But that doesn’t mean the site is bad. Just that you’re not its target audience. Its target audience expects exactly what they get – a unique, rich, immersive experience – and Gucci.com provides that in spades.
How Cute is This?
Just had to share this with the world.
iPod vs. Zune – Another Zinger from Jobs
Here’s another Steve Jobs “Q&A” that beautifully sums up Apple’s approach to technology vs. Microsoft’s.
QUESTION: Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
ANSWER: In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
He’s got a point.
Blog Fatigue, as explained by Lloyd Dobler
I’m feeling a bit blog/web 2.0 fatigued at the moment. I was planning on writing a long whiny post about it, but instead I’ll put it this way…
“I don’t want to blog anything, aggregate anything, or syndicate anything as a hobby. I don’t want to aggregate anything blogged or syndicated, blog anything aggregated or syndicated, or syndicate anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated, or tag anything aggregated, blogged, or syndicated. You know, as a hobby. I don’t want to do that.”
You haven’t seen the last of me, but excuse me if I go underground a while as I ponder my role in the blogiverse (or not).
Blenders, YouTube, and what “new media” really means
Blendtec makes blenders – REALLY POWERFUL blenders. To give people the idea of just how powerful the blenders are, they created a series of clips entitled “Will it Blend?“, and have uploaded them to YouTube. Check out the one where they turn a bag of marbles into a cloud of glass dust.
Many companies like to create online advertising campaigns in virtual walled gardens – keeping all content within their own web site. The assumption being that, by having full control over the “experience”, the marketer can fully absorb you into the carefully crafted aesthetic world of their brand, thus building a stronger connection with you.
This is entirely wrongheaded. You need to bring your advertising to where the people are. Even as the web fragments into more and more millions of web sites, the vast majority of users spend the vast majority of their time on a handful of web sites. “The web” can no longer be treated as a single medium – individual web communities such as YouTube need to be treated as distinct media in and of themselves.
Your own web site is the virtual equivalent of a real-world boutique. Sometimes a boutique is exactly what you want. That’s where people go to buy your stuff. But if what you’re selling is a message, you don’t hang ads up all over the walls of your own little boutique – where people only come in randomly or via expensive promotional efforts – you plaster the walls of the subway, the billboards on the highway – where the people are. Subways are loaded with unpleasant imagery – yet Apple, one of the most image-conscious brands on the planet, has no problem slathering the walls of subway stations with iPod posters.
Refusing to advertise via sites like YouTube and MySpace because you don’t have full control over the experience is as ignorant as not advertising in subways because they are filled with vagrants and overflowing trash barrels, or not advertising on highway billboards because there are smelly smokestacks nearby. You need to advertise where people actually are, even if you don’t fully “own the experience”. People don’t hang out “on the web”, they hang out on specific sites. Be there.
Getting Real – Free
37signals, advocates of simplified software and software development have released their how-to book, Getting Real, for free, in HTML format.
Scott Adams Rewires his Brain
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) runs a blog which is far more interesting and thought-provoking than you might expect. Unbeknownst to me (and presumably many other people) Scott lost his ability to speak – permanently – about 18 months ago. Actually, he didn’t lose it entirely – in a bizarre quirk of his disease (Spasmodic Dysphonia), he retained his ability to speak to large crowds, or with no one else around, but not socially, in small groups. Read his fascinating account of his life with the disease, and how he recently made a major breakthrough in fighting it. I’m always amazed at how mysterious and adaptable the human brain is, when subjected to bizarre circumstances:
The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day
The Essence of YouTube Fully Explained in One Screenshot
Yup, that about sums it up.