High End Product, Low End Design

I loved particletree's post this week titled "Prestigious Design Gone Wrong", in which he spotlighted a few name-brand sites such as Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, and Fendi. Interestingly enough, most of the sites highlighted have pretty poor design, a shoddy user experience, and major accessability issues.

My thoughts on this is that most purchasers of this kind of high-end product do not go online to buy. They go in person to the store, whether it's Rodeo Drive or Paris, in order to touch and feel what kind of coin purse they're going to blow $1200 on. Therefore, perhaps a website is not on the high list of priorities.

I'm a fashion magazine afficionado so I thought it would be fun to create my own list of Extremely Expensive Luxury Product Website Critiques. So here we go:

• Hummer: Somebody likes their Flash, in fact, they like it so much that they created a whole website around it. The main website content can only be accessed through a pop-up window and there's not much text to speak of. However, while the website is poorly designed, they have an instantly recognizable and searchable brand name and therefore they're not doing too bad in the rankings department.
• Louis Vuitton: Here we go. This is a well-designed site, could use some more keyword-rich content, but the user experience is excellent. They outsource their online shopping through eLuxury.com, and during my little fantasy shopping experience I found it to be very pleasant.
• Marc Jacobs: Here's the thing: I think that quite a few luxury fashion designers need to go to Too Much Flash Anonymous, because they have got a major hankering for it. For example, the Marc Jacobs site. The whole thing can't be accessed unless you decide to enable popups and then it took forever and a day to load up on my cable connection. And why do all the models look so sad?
• Christian Dior Couture: GAH! Note to self: do not turn speakers on when viewing the Dior site, since upon first arrival, you are bombarded with loud pop music and there is NO way to turn it off until you figure out you need to click on "English", but then you're funneled into a popup Flash-choked window that completely freezes your entire computer, causing you to do the dreaded Ctl-Alt-Dlt three-fingered salute. End of note.
• Pucci: Pucci allows the user to choose between the Flash and non-Flash site from the get-go, a nice touch. The non-Flash site is nice; standard design, but very slow to load. Then I tried out the Flash site, and here comes the LOUD music that I can't turn off again without frantically searching for the OFF button, which I finally found. Again, a site that froze my computer. Pretty clothes though.
• Juicy Couture: Again with the non-turning off music, but this time, we've got an eerily detached voice talking about Juicy something or other. And you can't turn it off. I tried. Plus, even though I really poked around this site, I never figured out what exactly they were trying to sell me. Other than cool...which I probably need to buy. Is it on sale?

Thus ends my foray into the World of Luxury. The sites overall were beautiful, but as far as user experience? Meh. Horrible. But like I said before, these luxury vendors are not catering to Joe and Jane Browser, they're more interested in the brick and mortar traffic. Which is too bad, since I think the last time I checked there's a lot of people going online. Tons. Seriously. Perhaps the next time I'm viewing the latest runway collections in Milan I'll casually drop some hints.

Related: Get some site design help with my Ten Tips for Search Engine Friendly Web Design.