Many product-selling websites include a lot of Web 2.0 tricks to convince the Internet surfer that the product is worth checking out. Heck, even Cheerios has a website which includes a flashy splash intro. Most product sites seem to be nothing more than an excuse to have a site, like a self-fulfilling prophecy of owning a company:
"Well, if we have a product, we must have a website!"
Certain consumer products have useful and inventive websites, such as this one I recently found: Acne.org. I found this site through a linked video in YouTube. The site contains many of these videos, which is a brilliant idea for free advertisement (click on the thumbnails for full-size pics).
The site is massive in content. From just the home page, a viewer can tell the large amount of information conveyed throughout all of the separate pages. The top menu bar alone contains more than twenty different sections from which to choose, all separated under broader categories. Many of these sections include video demonstrations of the tips and tricks that the web master (and product creator) hopes to teach. These video clips are high quality, short, well-scripted, and have reasonable volume.
Other sections of the site take advantage of a multitude of Web 2.0 tools. Members of the site can use the forums to voice their complaints and compliments of all of the different acne products and treatments on the market. Going one step further, members can upload pictures and video, showing their progress to healthy skin.
The overall feel of the site is very personal. The blog serves mostly to thank people who contributed to the site and to make announcements about upcoming products and updates. The store section is very thorough and does not pressure the user to purchase. In fact, the site details various over-the-counter substitutions for all of the products found on the site. Finally, the About Me page shows everyone why the creator of the site started the product line, and amazingly, the story comes across honest and thought-provoking. It's a refreshing change of pace from most "why we did this" pages filled with boring, cheesy anecdotes.
Any negatives?
I found that I couldn't find articles using the search feature as easily as I would have liked (the site needs something more specific than the custom Google search), and certain forums and user-generated content seemed cluttered. At various times, I felt like my senses were being overloaded with the slew of content on every page. However, these small complaints were nothing to detract from the usefulness found on the site.
I would love to see more product sites that utilized Web 2.0 tools to both engage and comfort the reader. I personally felt like I learned a lot from the site and was rarely bored with the presentation. Other product sites could learn a lot from this one.
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