I was asked my opinion about luxury sites I do or do not think are well done, so I sat down for an hour and a half, Googled a bit, and then surfed and wrote down notes. As it turns out I only need talking points, so I decided to share my notes here, complete with snark.
Luxury sites have long been notorious for ignoring usability or often even utility. I hadn’t actually looked at any of these sites in quite some time, so this was actually a good check in. If this random sampling (basically gleaned from mentions in the first few articles that come up from googling “top luxury brands”, combined with a few that were specifically mentioned to me) is an indicator, then, as a market sector, “luxury” has actually improved, although many of the brands clearly still have a ways to go…
Pros
Chopard.tv is a great video player. Good photography, clear navigation.
Cons
All Flash, long wait to load before you can see or do anything. No RSS for press releases, which are password protected. Too much porn music.
Notes
Press Room goes to second site – http://www.chopard-press.com/, Contact, Careers, Customer Service, all on main site.
Pros
Clean, can get to all destinations from initial page. Excellent photography, it’s tough to make such gaudy stuff look okay.
Cons
Navigation changes sometimes from subsite to subsite. Everything wants to open a new window. Stupid disabling of some keyboard functions.
Notes
Many sections, such as IR and careers go to separate sites hosted on subdomains, e.g. Investor Relations points to ir.bulgari.com.
Pros
It’s pretty and everything is one place.
Cons
Sloooooow. All Flash, doesn’t even update window location so no bookmarking or copy and paste of URLs. Section naming is really confusing, navigation looks easy but it’s actually difficult to find things and other links go to unexpected places.
Pros
Flash is used where it’s necessary instead of everywhere. RSS feed for press and news. Personalization. Large photo rollovers actually work pretty well.
Cons
Nothing particularly compelling on homepage, but decent use of “cover story” concept. They somehow managed to find and use a bad photo of Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps too much use of mini-sites.
Notes
Tag Heuer makes a cell phone, who knew. (ed: Will build web site for Monaco 24 Concept watch).
Pros
Lots of options on homepage. RSS. Good mix of HTML and Flash. Community features.
Cons
Poor execution of red gradients. Way too many features hidden behind registration. Drop shadow happy.
Pros
Simple to use. Mute button applies sitewide. Nice, subtle, interaction features in certain areas (choosing between Men and Women under Collections).
Cons
Terrible URL plan. Some surprisingly bad use of type color on photos.
Pros
It’s pretty.
Cons
What is going on in this site? W.T.F. Am I even at the right site? I guess I clicked too much, the navigation bar broke. Is that photo on the homepage a giant alien hairdryer? And to think this company made a shoe I liked. Oh hey, speaking of, WHERE THE HELL ARE THE SHOES???
Pros
Brilliant use of background photography with foreground navigation and page elements. Resize the window and the site still looks quite good and remains functional. Great photography.
Cons
I think I broke the store locator. The use of Flash to do some of the tricks kills some mouse functionality. There must be a separate corporate site? There are no careers or press sections??? Did I just miss them? This is probably not the easiest site to maintain.
Notes
Revo has a long history of well-received site designs, going back to the mid-90s.
Pros
Still looking for some…
Cons
It’s not as horrifically confusing as prada.com, but I couldn’t find anything of interest or utility besides the store locator. It pops open in a new window for no reason whatsoever. The red gradients are supposed to look elegant but just look garish and like a poor ripoff of blue Macintosh wallpaper.
Notes
The Middle Eastern sites are in English and French but not Arabic (or Hebrew for that matter).
Pros
As an ecommerce site that is trying to just be simple and elegant, it’s actually pretty good. This site has really come along way over the years.
Cons
May not be a fair comparison since it is essentially now an ecommerce site rather than a “luxury brand” site. But maybe that’s a positive?
Notes
The girl on the homepage looks like somebody dressed up a real doll (NSFW!!!!) as a hippie.
Pros
Lots of video.
Cons
Confusing. More fucking porn music, WTF is up with that? Opens new windows for no reason. I have to wait for an entire Flash piece to load to choose between Fashion or Eyewear under Store Locator.
Notes
The Paris-Moscou line looks like it was possessed by Queen Padme’s hairdresser.
Pros
Technically impressive use of Javascript and CSS. Excellent guided search. This site has also come a long way over the years.
Cons
Fear of the vertical scroll seems a bit obsessive. Gold tones don’t look so hot onscreen.
Conclusions
Tag Heuer, Revo and Tiffany have the best sites of the bunch. Prada was obviously the worst. One thing I will say for all of them that stunned me is that I didn’t have to sit through a splash page on a single one. Some of them seem to get that on the web URL choice is more important in the long run. Fashion and high-end jewelry are still obsessed with porn music, what can you do?