Suunto is heavily promoting their new beta site they expect to launch in early 2010. The tactic of launching a “beta” site available to anyone is typically done for two purposes:
- Build hype by allowing visitors to see the hot new thing that’s “coming soon”
- Builds the ability to say “sorry, it’s still in beta” any time someone finds a problem
Is the new beta site something to get excited over? Or is it just a big company trying to modernize their online presence without actually understanding the future of the web? Let’s take a look.
The Old Suunto Site
I always found the home page of the Suunto site a bit scattered and not always the easiest to find the core focus. Take a look:
Click to enlarge
For me, these are the biggest issues:
- Their campaigns on the right look like ads. Sure, they’re for Suunto products, but they still look like ads.
- The navigation gets lost. With all the boxes and washed out colors, I’d better hope what I’m looking for is in the featured box or in the ads on the right.
- It looks like they probably had a modern site several years ago, then have just modified it slightly to keep up as trends evolved.
As we click through to see their SCUBA diving gear, I think it gets even worse. Only one product is highlighted and there appears to just be a bunch of random stuff thrown all over the place. The primary navigation isn’t consistent with what we saw on the home page either, which is odd. It just takes far too many clicks to get to the real meat.
The New Suunto Site
The new Suunto site appears to believe the mindset that dark = modern. They have pulled it off fairly well, specifically improving the navigation by making it easier to find and use and really highlighting their latest/greatest products. Take a look:
Click to enlarge
My #1 biggest complaint with this site is that they used Flash for their featured content gallery despite the fact that A) most mobile browsers can’t view Flash and B) it’s completely unnecessary with some CSS/dHTML/AJAX programming.
As we click through to their SCUBA equipment, we get dive watches, dive watches and nothing but dive watches. This is a very good thing. The new compare option is nice and the product page navigation is clean, straightforward and easy to use, plus adding social sharing options shows at least a basic understanding of the concepts of Web 2.0.
The reason I say a basic understanding is they have done nothing to incorporate their Twitter or Facebook accounts. I’m not sure why, since they are actually doing a good job of interacting with SCUBA diving consumers on both social network.
I’m not sold on the “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” box because it shows almost every other dive watch they carry, at least in my experiments. Don’t customers look for accessories for their products? Not according to this tool.
The Verdict
Overall, I am impressed with the changes Suunto plans to make on their web site.
- Navigation and search is easier to find and more intuitive to use
- Social sharing options is a nice, if not obvious improvement
- The enhanced product prominence is excellent
The only improvements I would suggest before they pull the “beta” label off:
- Promote the official Twitter and Facebook accounts
- Remove the unneccessary Flash from the home page
- Use search engine friendly product URL’s
- Improve the usefulness of the “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” box
Lessons for your SCUBA Web Site
- Make navigation and search easy to find and use
- Don’t use unnecessary technologies just for WOW-factor
- Always focus on search engine optimization
- Link all online activities
Great job Suunto, I look forward to the official launch!
What do you think?
Photo via Jamestiks
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{ 6 comments }
Hi all,
The very fact that we are discussing the pros/cons of what Suunto is doing speaks to how savvy the concept of beta is. Now, if they are truly listening, they will evaluate your comments and make some needed updates to their beta site prior to rolling it live. It's a smart play where $$ are on the line and conversion is king.
I also noticed a few things:
When considering global SEO they might consider creating some language specific sitmap.xml files
http://beta.suunto.com/en/sitemap.xml
This would be helpful if they were to have an actual product page.
I totally agree with the comment about use of flash. It's not really needed here and the usership of mobile devices by the technical watch demographic should be a primary consideration when building your audience analysis. I am an iphone user and would prefer to see some javascript here.
The search tool creeps along at best. I hope this is just a beta issue. Unusable. Nice use of ajax for the in context search stuff but you gotta seal the deal. I need good results. Your users are accustom to google search results. Feels like .net nuke (just a guess) – Also, your product pages should be weighted first. I searched on Suunto Core Extreme Edition Red, first result is an event. Not relevant to me if it's in france and I'm in the US. We should assume a user is looking for product first then your content.
If the development team for Suunto is smart and I think they are; they will pay attention to our feedback and make some tweaks.
Nice job Suunto, cant wait to see the real deal.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
I think placing the "beta" title on it was a gamble: people could have stumbled upon it and said it was great, or more like the discussion going on here, said it's lame. If they wanted inexpensive user feedback, they could have done it at UserTesting.com. Plus, since no changes have been made (maybe due to the holidays) and no one has entered into the discussion here, on Twitter or Facebook, I doubt the feedback we're providing is going to get rolled into the update.
You are dead on about the language specific sitemaps, I hope for their sake they introduce those before launch.
I'm glad it wasn't just me that found the search tool to be incredibly slow. And I ran into the same issue with results returning non-product specific pages, which I agree is rather odd.
I've been impressed with Suunto's products over the years (I've owned more of their computers than I have masks), but due to lack of engagement on any of the social media channels, I will be pleasantly surprised if they include any of the issues we've addressed here before launch.
Thanks again for bringing up some great points.
I'd have to say ho hum to this.
A website like this one looks is a glorified brochure. NO need for a beta of that. Give me some new functionality that makes life different, then that might be cool.
Using flash and minimising the use of social media is a good way to stay low on Google juice.
People want content more than flash. They want enhanced value more than content.
This should be an alpha test!:)
I agree that this isn't anything revolutionary, but it is a much needed upgrade for Suunto, so I'll give them some kudos for that. Many of the other SCUBA equipment manufacturers aren't even taking this step.
But you're right, slapping a "beta" label on it tells me they are starting to see all of the new Web 2.0 sites with beta on them, but don't really understand why.
I'm also a little surprised to see that they are using Twitter and Facebook fairly effectively, but they aren't monitoring the blogosphere for their brand (otherwise I would expect a visit here
)
Had a chance to look at the site, and am quite underwhelmed.
Navigation is clunky, page rendering is ordinary, and the use of Flash is somewhat unimaginative.
More than anything, why would I ever want to visit the site? Theres nothing there that would have me want to come back after an initial, cursory, visit.
I find the top of page navigation to be fairly straightforward and easy to use and the product navigation borrows heavily from Newegg, Amazon, Pricegrabber and the like, so it's a format I think a lot of people have seen, but it's definitely not the most attractive. More utilitarian than anything.
You're right though about repeat visits, the only real reason to come back is if you're looking into purchasing something and want to look up specs without going into a local store that carries them. Definitely a minor facelift.
I think none of the big manufacturers really understand that they could be connecting with consumers directly. Why wouldn't they want a consumer calling around asking "Do you carry Suunto?" instead of walking into a store, seeing a Suunto and saying "I've never heard of them."
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