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Skittles: A Taste of How Web Sites Should Be Done
By: Marijean Jaggers | 03/18/2009
Unless someone's directed you there, or you've caught the buzz, OR you're just a raving Skittles fan, you may not have seen the new Skittles site. I urge you to go look. I'll wait.
OK, are you done? No? You want to hang out there and explore, don't you? Skittles has brilliantly brought together components of social media in their site, creating, in my opinion, the finest model of the new consumer products Web site to be found. If I had an award to give, I'd be giving it. The site combines Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia for an interactive, dynamic site.
Blogger Tony Adam disagrees and overall, calls the Skittles site a Fail. I agree with his point that the required "age entry" to access the site is a bit off-putting, but for the savvy Web user, the site makes sense -- and who are they trying to attract? Young savvy Web users, right?
So now that you've been to Skittles.com what's your opinion? Success or Fail?
Posted in Brand Positioning, Digital Communications
comments
Colleen says:
Thu, March 19, 2009 at 9:35:am
The new Skittles site is a rip off of the Modernista! site launched last year: http://modernista.com/7/index.php
While it’s cool that they’re leveraging social media instead of building a standalone site… it’d be even cooler if they came up with an original idea.
Patrick Lunsford says:
Thu, March 19, 2009 at 1:07:pm
I hate to pile on ... but I think it looks like one of those “ghetto” MySpace pages you mentioned last week. I also don’t like that I can’t move the top menu and there aren’t any real customization options. Maybe I’m missing it, but for being social, I’d like it more if I felt I could upload videos of my own to the site, instead of the site just being a depository for commercials.
Christi says:
Thu, March 19, 2009 at 2:13:pm
Guilty confession. Checked this out, was not amused by the ads. Ended up watching a cartoon on YouTube instead. I don’t think that’s what Skittles intended.
Sara says:
Wed, March 18, 2009 at 2:54:pm
I know why Skittles has an age-entry requirement: You need to be 13 to be on the web. It’s a legality technicality. Skittles is covering their tushies. The same with any alcohol-themed site, where you need to be 21 (all those have age-entry requirements as well).
As per the actual site, I was expecting to get Skittles’ actual site, not a video-only site that looks like a rip-off of YouTube or re-routing from the popular vidshare site. The top logo is quite distracting—it looks like it’s covering up something that I need to see, and I can’t move it.
All in all, Skittles needs to rework the site big time and figure out what the purpose of the site is, who it is targeted to, and why they put it together like they did. So far, most of the users look like they’re over 20 and the site really isn’t doing much other than sitting there. Also, it’s nice to have these extras for certain organizations and fields, but you don’t need them for a candy. Overkill.