Blog homeMarketers tend to seek to demonstrate why their product is better (or different) than a competitors however they tend to do this via very similar websites. Would a differentiated web design help differentiate the product or service being offered?
The travel web begins to look a little like this - with all sites looking very similar:
Take for example the new Ebookers.com design released in the last few weeks:
It has a nice, clean, modern design - and has obviously had the input from a skilled creative director - however it could be any one of 15 large dot coms. There is not much different about it.
Here is a very different design. You will remember this once you have visited - its from Arngren.net from Norway:
If you like this kind of design (and have recovered from the shock) - then take a look at LingsCars.com - another very different design - but somewhat similar to the Arngren example above. Scary.
Why you should be the same as your competitors:
- Users spend most of their time on other sites - (Jakob Nielsen’s first law of Internet User Experience, July 2000) - therefore if you have a navigation or completely different concept to your competitor websites - you may struggle to get users to understand what you are doing
- Less risk - you could decide to have a similar design to other competitor websites and try to differentiate through another means (like product range, price or customer service). Probably a good option for those who find coming up with original design ideas a challenge - or those in large corporate environments where design risk would not be acceptable (or understood) within a project.
Why you should be different from your competitors:
- During the research phase users will visit multiple websites before they purchase - will they be able to remember which website it was where they saw the product or special offer they saw half an hour ago?
- Show you are better than your competitors - remember when you had a great brochure and your competitors had an average one - did that help you?
The examples of differentiated design - LingsCars.com and Arngren.net - are both in very competitive markets - car leasing and online gadget sales. I expect that their differentiated design probably helps them because users really will remember their sites - and still probably remember them in 6 months time.
However, I don’t propose you go and design a website just like theirs….. or perhaps you could…I would love to see it!
What can you do to your website to differentiate yourself from your competitors?
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Alex,
Thanks for mentioning my site, I do put a lot of effort into it. It was built organically, but I do value the way it cannot be confused with any of the (pretty poor) leasing sites out there. I have done things like pull in NCAP safety data, environment data, I even have a “fag calculator” comparing the cost of fags with running a new car.
Travel sites might do well to offer carbon footprints for each holiday sold, or CO2 values. How about a “worst hotel” feature?
My main strength (I think) is that it is clearly a person, not a corporation behind my website, and I publish over 600+ customer letters (no one else does that to any degree in my sector). I will turnover £25m of new cars (that’s £250k gross invoiced income) from my website this year 2007. So something clearly works
- Ling