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| Connectis March 2001 / E-commerce |
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E-commerce websites
Published: March 23 2001 10:57GMT | Last Updated: April 24 2001 15:38GMT
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Site of the Month = DELL
Cze. Dan. Dut. Eng. Finn. Fle. Fre. Ger. Gre. Hun. Japa. Ita. Nor. Pol. Spa. Swe.
You can customise an extraordinary range of products online these days, from cars to insurance policies, semiconductors to picture frames. One pioneer is Dell, which has had great success with its “build-your-own” computer website. Dell generates some 50 per cent of its annual income online. That's $50m (£34.6m) worth of business over the internet every day. It is hard to argue with that sort of success. But how user-friendly is its site - particularly for technical klutzes like me? The last time I ordered online I got confused by all the technical jargon and had to phone a friend. This time I made straight for the Small Business pages and chose the Desktops option in the Dell online shop. I was asked to choose between the Dimension and the Optiplex range, both offering whizzy machines with a host of bewildering features. To guide me through the maze there was a glut of departments - Learn More, Help Me Choose, Recommended Systems and pop-up help windows galore. Advice ranges from the genuinely helpful to the impossibly impenetrable. How am I to know whether a “32k non-blocking internal L1 cache” is a good thing or a bad thing? There was far more information on this site than I needed; you could easily drown in the facts. I still had to phone a friend.
www.dell.com
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BOOKTAILOR
Eng.
Here is an innovative example of customisation on the web. UK-based Booktailor allows visitors to choose segments from travel guides (anything from newspaper articles to Lonely Planet guides) and build their own travel book online. This is then printed on demand and delivered within about one week. Users can also select "added value" items, such as poems, regional recipes and reviews of events. The service can be expensive - from £9.99 (e17) for 100 pages, spiral bound, to £34.99 (e55) for 750 pages - but the user-friendly site is expertly designed, with an excellent book-building simulator to guide customers through the entire enjoyable process.
www.booktailor.co.uk
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KICKERS
Eng. Dut. Fre.
If you fancy sporting a pair of pink-mauve- orange-and-bright-green-coloured shoes, this Belgian footwear site will accommodate your fantasies. Visitors can customise their leather Kickers by “colouring in” four parts of a leather shoe using a pop-up paint palette offering 20 colour choices. The colouring process is fast, simple and fun and there is also the opportunity to customise the sole (colour and type - ie crepe, rubber or notched rubber) before electronically ordering. The shoes are then custom-made and sent within 15 days of the order. But only, it seems, in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.LEGOwww.lego.comLego's new online shop includes some nifty web-only features including a clever customisation offering called Lego Mosaic. Visitors can scan in a picture (self-portraits are the most popular, apparently) and then use an online editor to create and edit a mosaic in black and white. A customised kit to build the mosaic can then be ordered from the online shop at £24.75 (e39) plus p&p. The kit includes some 2000 black-and-white Lego bricks, building instructions and a frame and hanger. You can crop your pictures and change the shading and contrast with an online editing tool, dubbed a Brick-o-Lizer. It is a little bit clunky for smaller kids, but otherwise great fun.
www.kickers.be
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LEGO
Eng. Ger.
Lego's new online shop includes some nifty web-only features including clever customisation offering caled Lego Mosaic. Visitors can scan in a picture (self-portraits are most popluar, apparently) and then use an online editor to create and edit a mosaic in black and white. A customisded kit to build the mosaic can then be ordered from the online shop at £24.75 (e39) plus p&p. The kit includes some 2000 black-and-white Lego bricks, building instructions and a frame and hanger. You can crop your pictures anc change the shading and contrast with an online editing tool, dubbed a Brick-o-Lizer. It is a little bit clunky for smaller kids, but otherwise great fun.
www.lego.com
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CARD CORPORATION
Eng.
This is a great idea - design, proof and order your own business cards online - but its execution is poor. You can design your own cards using on-screen templates or you can submit a corporate style and logo, which can be saved for editing at any time. Once you have ordered and paid online, professionally printed cards are delivered “within days”. But the online demo just presents you with a design palette to sort out yourself - when what is really needed is a step-by-step guided tour for new users. There is also no information about the company itself. A more impressive interface and customisable range of products are provided by the US company
www.iprint.com
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VAUXHALL
Eng.
Vauxhall claims that the first person to buy a car online was a 63-year-old grandmother. It is a good story and, certainly, the selection process seems remarkably painless. You can customise any model in the showroom online and choose from an enormous range of options, from colour and trim to a long list of accessories - everything from baby cushions to satellite navigation systems. You can also calculate payments and choose from a range of payment schemes. And, once you have chosen your ideal car (at a special internet price) you can select any other make and model and compare features.
www.vauxhall.co.uk
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QXL
Dan. Eng. Finn. Fre. Ger. Ita. Nor. Pol. Spa. Swed.
This long-established pan-European online auction knows how to make buying easy. Useful diagrams help new users get started, and the registration process is short and sweet. Each page has been tweaked to anticipate visitors' questions, minimising the number of potential buyers that give up out of confusion. Items on sale - including antiques, comics and other collectibles - are categorised by type and location of seller, and the “drill-down” search system is intuitive. Payment options, sellers' details and product descriptions are all clearly spelled out, building confidence in even the most sceptical internet user.
www.qxl.com
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Key
Features
= Online payment
= Online inquiry service
= Deliveries outside country of orgin
= Registration required prior to transactions
= Mailing list with news or details of special offers
Site rating
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
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Cze = Czech
Dan = Danish
Dut = Dutch
Eng = English
Fin = Finnish
Fle = Flemish
Fre = French
Ger = German
Gre = Greek
Hun = Hungarian
Japa = Japanese
Ita = Italian
Nor = Norwegian
Pol = Polish
Spa = Spanish
Swed = Swedish
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| Contact Ray Hurst: ray@rivervalley.freeserve.co.uk |
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