Fast Company announced The Fast Company 50 for 2009, identifying the country’s 50 most innovative companies.

This is the fourth in a series of quick website evaluations, in which Website Marketing NOW is reviewing the websites of the top 10 of The Fast Company list. Are the websites of these companies just as innovative as the companies themselves? Or not…

Number four on The Fast Company 50 list is Apple.com:

Apple.com Website Strengths

What makes Apple.com so great is 1) just how beautiful the site is, and 2) the site’s ease-of-use. Among electronics websites, Apple.com is so far beyond the others from an aesthetic perspective, it’s a bit ridiculous.

Apple’s site is purely wonderful to view. The images are bold, clear and beautiful. And it’s not just the imagery that works well. It’s how Apple includes a small bit of text that remarkably hits the mark in messaging and in differentiating the brand and products.

For example:

Small Talk.

The new iPod Shuffle. The first music player that talks to you.

Or:

iPhone 3G

35,000 apps. And counting.

The fastest way to buy an iPhone3G starts right here.

Wow! Apple is great at marketing. And they have a great website.

Apple.com Website Weaknesses

Surprisingly, for a company so exceptional at marketing, the site is surprisingly product-focused. This is noticeable even at the most basic levels of the site.

For example, the top-level navigation is extremely product-focused rather than audience- or solution-focused, with labels such as “Store,” “Mac,” “iPod + iTunes,” “iPhone.”

It seems that Apple is missing a critical way of connecting with its audience, and that’s through the customer’s lifestyle, interests and objectives.

What is it that the customer is looking for? Music? OK. Let’s figure out how the site can satisfy the customer’s needs:

• Is the customer looking to CREATE music, or LISTEN to music?
• Is it for fun?
• For sharing?
• Is the customer a DJ?
• A road-warrior looking for simple music solutions for traveling?
• Getting ready to put together a party mix?
• Looking to build the perfect music system for the home?
• Hoping to have some tunes to listen to while jogging around the neighborhood?
• Etc.

By focusing on lifestyle/interest/objective, Apple could address the customer’s true needs more effectively. It would provide a better solution for the customer, and would open up a number of relevant cross-sell opportunities for Apple. A true Win-Win.

We’re not saying that Apple should eliminate its product-focused content. We’re just saying that complementary to the product-focus, it should add lifestyle-focused, interest-focused and objective-focused content that speaks to distinct audience segments.

Even where Apple does seem to integrate this into their site, it’s at the product level. So for example, you first have to visit the iPhone section in order to know that there are great applications for traveling or office productivity. This is short-sighted and limiting, both to the customer as well as to Apple.

This dual approach to customer communication would enable someone who does not know what an iPhone3G is or has not already decided on the product, to instead focus on the most important things they would like to achieve, with the technology simply being an enabler rather than being the objective in and of itself.

Check out our evaluations of the organizations ranked atop the Fast Company 50:

#1 Team Obama

#2 Google

#3 Hulu.com

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Related posts:

1. Quick Website Evaluation: TheFlip.com
2. Quick Website Evaluation: Hulu.com
3. Quick Website Evaluation: Intel.com
4. Quick Website Evaluation: The Fast Company 50
5. Quick Website Evaluation: Cisco.com

Tags: apple, apple.com, fast company, fast company 50, website audit, website evaluation

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am and is filed under website evaluation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.