An Evaluation of the Websites of Three Shoe Companies
Many companies now use websites to advertise their products. In this essay I will evaluate the effectiveness of several shoe websites. Three websites that I have been looked at are: www.nike.com (niketown), www.reebok.com, and www.adidas.com. They all are big companies that provide many kinds of shoes. Their websites looked similar in the first sight, but they are actually very different in several ways. My evaluation will be based on the navigation, contents, organization and layout of the websites, target audiences, user satisfaction with the websites, and how long the page takes to load.
Navigation is one of the most important aspects in creating a good website. Navigation consists of several terms, such as: ease to use, internal link, broken link, internal search engine, and return to homepage from any page. Nike seems to have the best navigation from these threes websites. I can find things easily and I can go back to the homepage from any page. Reebok also has good navigation in its website, but it does not have a direct link to the homepage from any page. On the other hand, Adidas seems to be the most complicated website in terms of navigation. I need to spend a couple minutes to find a certain product. It has many internal links inside its website. Besides that, Adidas uses pop up windows in its website. Both Nike and Reebok also have a
search engine at the top bar of their websites. This search bar can help consumers to find their desired product quickly, which I think that is very helpful. Unlike Adidas, which does not have a search engine in the website, so consumers have to browse all over the website in order to find the desired product. . The good thing about these three websites is they do not have a broken link, because they are being maintenance and updated all the time.
Besides navigation, content is also a good consideration in order to create a good website. As I go into these three websites, I found that they all basically have the same content. They provide such important information about their products. They all also provide some details about their product such as, prices. The content that is provided by these websites is very attractive. They provide the image of the products that can be enlarged so consumers can look clearly at the desired products. Moreover, the colors and the graphics that are represented on the websites are completely matched to the websites. I believe the images would attract most of the people that look at these websites. Besides that, all the information that is represented in the websites are up-to-date, so consumers always notice the latest news of the products. The websites also provide some services that can be used for unfamiliar consumers in order to get a better understanding to the site's content. Those services are: FAQ (frequently asked questions), contact us, and customer service.
Both Nike and Reebok have a better organization than Adidas. I can browse different kind of shoes easily at Nike and Reebok. Both of them provide a menu bar for their products. Nike provides a menu bar at the left side and Reebok's is at the top. It consists of little tabs, so consumers can just click on what products they want. This menu
bar will actually help consumers to jump over the desired products quickly. On the other hand, Adidas has a quite complicated and limited in term of organization. Due to these complicated and limited organization, the products that sold by Adidas are limited as well. Consumers need to spend some time in order to find their desired products. For example, I was looking for basketball shoes. I could just simply click on the menu bar in the Nike and Reebok websites. Nike has "basketball" written on the menu and Reebok has "Basketball shoes" in the tab. In term of layout, I would say that Adidas is the best compared to the other two websites because it has a nice combination of tables that fit into the website. Besides that, the Adidas website is also supported by nice sounds. Both Nike and Reebok seem to be quite similar in terms of layout. They have a simple layout, but one which is easy to use by consumers.
In term of audience, I found that these websites have completely different target. Nike and Reebok are targeting their audience for all ages. They have a broader target in their business than Adidas does. Their audiences start from kids to adults, with male and female. On the other hand, Adidas seems to be targeting its audience to the adults only. This fact can be seen clearly from their products. Based on this fact, we can see that Adidas has a better layout because its target audience is adults. In sense that Adidas is focusing its website based on adult's interest. Because of these audiences, the products that are provided by Adidas are limited, too. Adidas has just introduced its products based on current trends. In a sense, it just chooses the most famous products. For example, Adidas chooses the most famous NBA players' shoes as their products right now, such as: Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, and Kevin Garnett. On the other hand, both Nike and Reebok provide most of the NBA players' shoes in their products.
For user satisfaction, I found that these websites actually provide reliability to their products. Consumers can buy their products online without worrying about anything. In term of shipping, they also provide a tracking number of the products online, so consumers can check on when the products are going to arrive. They also provide a phone number that can be called on the business day if anything goes wrong with the products. Before consumers can buy any product on these websites, they have to sign up for personal identification in order to provide a secure electronic transaction. The sign up process might take a couple minutes only. It just asks very common questions. This identification can prevent items from being stolen. Besides that, this identification is relatively secure because it must be completed with the correct combination of user name and password. The user name and password can be anything depending on the consumers. Besides that, this identification will help someone to buy some products in these websites easily next time because the websites will keep all this personal information for a long time. In a sense, consumers can just simply sign in using their user name and password for their next purchases.
Finally, one of the biggest concerns about websites is how long the website needs to load a page. People might get bored and angry if the website needs a long time to be loaded. Moreover, people will not even come back to the website anymore. But as I noticed while opening these three websites, they all take very little time to load their pages. Both Adidas and Reebok almost have the same time to load. But Nike seems a little slower to load its page compared to the other two websites. This happens because Nike provides some flash graphics on its website. These flashes will slow down the loading of the pages.
For the conclusion, I would say that these three websites are pretty good. In fact, they are targeting different audiences. Because of the audiences, these websites have been created in a different style as well. Both Nike and Reebok seem to have similar websites since their targeting audiences are similar. On the other hand, Adidas seems to have its own style. Finally, I would say that they are all very professional in their websites in order to advertise their products. This makes them all well-known, well-used websites.