Commercial Sites Part 2
2nd edition — by Patrick McNeil — Aug. 28, 2007
The Site Type
This is another one of those topics that happens to have a misleading title. By Commercial Sites I mean sites that act as commercials for a product. Perhaps I should rename the section, but I couldn't come up with anything better! Suggestions?
Anyhow, this section is fascinating for a couple of reasons. One the sites tend to be pretty hot; they have plenty of financial backing as most of these come from big companies. It's interesting to see how much money can be put into a site when it is for advertising purposes and it recuperates much of the cost in increased sales. Secondly, these are niche sites, and as such when a visitor seeks them out they are not looking for the typical web site. The end result is that most of these sites are experience oriented. That is to say that when you visit this micro site about for a
Motorola
phone the intention is not cot just give you the dull and boring facts and features the phone offers. An entire mini site would not be needed were that the case. Instead what they are doing is creating a whole experience, one that serves to sell the consumer on an impression of what the product is like. In the case of the Motorola phone they want you to think it is the slickest, hippest, and all around coolest phone out there. What's really fascinating (and revealing) about the motorola site is that it resides in sub directory titled "experience." It seems the designers knew exactly what they were trying to do. Different products shown below are going for different connotations in their experience, but the goal is the same, to sell consumers on the product.
Certainly not all of the sites are geared so much towards the experience, but they do have an extreme polish to them that puts their product in the best possible light.
What gets me excited is pondering how these principals can be applied to sites that don't have a commercial goal. Take DesignMeltdown for example. How could I make the site into more of an experience? Would that be a good thing? I don't really know the answers. Maybe it would make the site more of a pain. But all the same, I can't ponder the possibilities of extending this type of experience to other types of sites.
Sample Usage
