Our investigation into what major DMers were presenting for the holiday season at their Web sites brought out the good Ebenezer Scrooge side of us and the bad.
Some companies came through with strong special offers and dazzling visuals, some added little Yuletide nooks to their regular sites and for a few it was just business as usual - which to our jaundiced eyes shows a woeful misunderstanding of what the Web is all about. Survey after survey shows that the most profitable e-marketers update their sites as often as they can; those that don't promote holiday specials online just as they would in catalogs or print ads sure to find coal in their interactive stockings on Dec. 25.
Let's start with the brilliantly designed yet simple J. Crew site (www.jcrew.com). A click on the tiny Christmas tree "gift guide" takes you directly into a secure server and shows you a selection of items in various price ranges. Click on a gift, click "OK" and it's yours. Offerings are easy to see and the ordering process is both colorful and easy to navigate. Shoppers still wary of online transactions can request a paper catalog or send e-mail to customer service.
Spiegel's Web site (www.spiegel. com) has a special section devoted to holiday shopping. It's a fraction of the entire site, but it's clever. Tucked in its @play area is a nifty retro-designed area with tips on holiday entertaining and how to survive December and New Year's with your faculties intact. Sure the "articles" are advertorials, but does anyone really think Spiegel is in the news business?
If there are small people on your shopping list whose taste runs more to Buzz Lightyear and The Lion King, the Disney Store site (http://store.disney.com) is a must-see - much better than the bloated Disney site we were so unhappy with earlier this year. The Disney Store's online fare is a faithful recreation of the retail operation's mail order catalog. Ordering is available, and there's a warning to kids under 18 to get a parent's OK before making a transaction. That's good thinking, because the site's bound to draw a lot of youngsters.
The Disney Store lets you search for everything from collectibles to clothes and features a zoom function that gives you a closer look at any item.
We weren't as impressed by a Disney competitor. We've always preferred Bugs to Mickey, but we have to say "Bah, Humbug" to the Warner Bros. Studio Store site (www.studiostores.warnerbros.com). There's an area displaying selected Christmas-theme items and a discount for Web shoppers - a nice incentive, but the site's messy and product categories are hard to find and often misleading. For example, when we clicked on "movies and TV," we expected to see - well, movies and TV shows. What we got was a clothing line tied to movies and TV titles.
Equally disappointing was the alleged Armani AX Holiday site (www.armaniexchange.com). We certainly didn't expect blinking red-and-green lights, but someone should inform Armani that merely tacking the words "holiday collection" on the front page of your site does not a holiday Web site make. Armani provides an object lesson in how not to engage an online audience. We don't expect discounts or Santa sweaters from Giorgio, but at least show us some of those cute little numbers celebrities are always wearing to awards shows.
Most of the holiday sites we checked out were Christmas. One exception was Hallmark, which understands that every occasion is an occasion to sell cards, wrapping paper and bows. Hallmark's site (www.hallmark.com) is one of very few sites allotting space to Hanukkah and Kwanza. The company scores extra points with a card-reminder service and a how- to section on gift-wrapping.
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The Piglet Press Inc. site (www.halcyon.com/piglet/books.htm) showed promise as a holiday-season shopping venue but ultimately disappointed on that score. Piglet Press, a mom-and-pop outfit in Issaquah, WA, nonetheless does plenty right by fellow devotees of The Wizard of Oz and its author, L. Frank Baum. One thing it does right is thoroughly inform Oziana buffs about Baum, about the land of Oz and its menagerie of fanciful characters - there's an alphabetical listing of Oz denizens with six entries just for "Z," including Zazagooch and Zebediah - and about clubs and events for Oz/Baum fans. We learn, for instance, that Baum penned numerous non-Oz books anonymously and under pseudonyms. You can even read entire books at the site, though the synopses' elegant and colorful graphics, featuring cover illustrations by John R. Neill, put you in the mood for real, tactile reading. That's where the site's a letdown. You find out about all these books you didn't know existed, you're taken back by the illustrations and nostalgia to your childhood discovery of fiction and then realize you can't order most offerings directly through the site. The way it works is, you fill out an order form and Piglet Press president William Wright, who runs the company with his wife, Rebecca, will call you or e-mail you with information about where to obtain titles that interest you; Piglet Press itself only sells audiobooks of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "The Emerald City of Oz." Despite its shortcomings, the site's a treat for Oz lovers, and direct marketers seeking readers with a yen for fantasy could find it a good source of list-rental ideas. - Neil Cassidy
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