Brand Name: Paiva
Agency/Site Creator: Molecular
URL: www.paiva.com

What is unusual and effective about this website?
How does one bring the high-touch feel of boutique shopping to the online environment? Molecular's brand experience team decided that we needed to give visitors the next best thing to a personal sales consultant. The Paiva site delivers an immersive customer experience that both engages shoppers and enables them to make highly informed buying decisions. Customers find products quickly and easily through an innovative product selection tool. Using guided navigation, the online shopping experience is tailored to the exact needs of customers, enabling them to find products based on attributes that are most important to them, such as brand, price, color and size.

How does the website fit into and complement the overall brand strategy for the company?
The tightly integrated design ensures the consistency of experience across multiple customer touch-points. Visitors to the site are presented with an upscale look and feel, colors, textures and messaging reflective of the in-store experience, a wide selection of products organized for easy browsing, selection and purchase, and a simple checkout process. In addition, a "lounge" area of the site parallels the community features in the store and emphasizes Paiva's premium service, in-depth knowledge and expertise by offering the latest health, fitness and event information.

How would you improve this website?
As part and parcel of our desire to create a very personal, assistive experience on the Paiva site, we would like to implement an "Outfit Configurator" supported by a rich internet application such as Flex or Ajax. Used to help build revenue through up- and cross-selling, it would also facilitate product location as well as help customers build a custom "look" of their own creation. By allowing the customer to mix and match tops, bottoms, and footwear in a single-screen environment, we would be recreating the store atmosphere and interactivity at a very individual level.

Brand Name: Nike + iPod Sport Kit
Agency/Site Creator: Not available
URL: nike.com/nikeplus

What is unusual and effective about this website?
Unlike Nike's main site, Flash technology is used here not merely for entertainment's sake, but to actually enhance the experience and functionality of the site. This is especially true of the My Runs, Community, and Sports Music areas where the richness of the technology is played out through the loading of information that resonates at the core of a runner's psyche-- personal stats, competition and performance tips. Load times are quick and the subtle darkening of the screen is an additional clue that you can take your eyes from the screen during this period without fear of missing something.

How does the website fit into and complement the overall brand strategy for the company?
This Nike micro-site takes a unique and powerful approach to interpreting their brand in partnership with the strong, well-established Apple brand. Gone is the familiar, dramatic black background. This has been replaced by a rich, vibrant red and stark white details that are an obvious nod to Apple's color scheme. Even the Nike "swoosh" is represented outside its own brand color. Typeface, too, is a blend of Nike's typical gray but with a softer, less aggressive Apple-like look and feel. Overall, Nike has created a strong synergy between its brand and Apples' without once showing the Apple logo or the iPod Nano product that is required for the partnership to work.

How would you improve this website?
It's clear that the Nike + site is meant to establish a dialogue with the user and to give visitors a number of different (and enticing) reasons to return to the site on a regular basis. But if you've missed all the media hype surrounding the iPod Sports Kit and its connection to the new Nike + running shoe line, you may need to dig a bit to understand how technology and apparel have come together to create a unique, new experience. While the lack of the Apple Logo and product shots of the iPod Nano helped to not dilute the Nike brand, now their absence limits some of the cache, excitement, and functionality that Apple brings to the party. The missed opportunity was a bit of cross-marketing of the partner product to really pull off the synergistic nature of the relationship.