Puma.com Feature Review
Wednesday, August 16, 2000
By Puja Buxani, Creative Good analyst
Summary: Puma.com makes customers supply their names before they can shop.
Date of our evaluation: July 24, 2000
Earlier this year, Reflect.com earned the top slot on our worst practices list for forcing customers through a lengthy personalization survey before letting them shop. (Read the review.) Puma.com makes a similar mistake by asking customers to provide their names before they enter the site. By prematurely soliciting this personal information, Puma has created an obstacle to shopping.
When first visiting Puma.com, customers might be surprised by a welcome page that asks them to type in their name and choose their location from a drop-down menu. Once customers provide this information, they click "Enter" to go to the home page. Once there, shoppers see why Puma asked for their name: to greet them with a "What's up?" message. For example, a customer who enters Sue as her name sees "What's up, Sue? Welcome to the Puma site" in very small type at the top of the page.
Presumably, Puma greets shoppers with this "What's up?" line to communicate brand personality. Unfortunately, displaying a customer's first name is not good personalization. In this case, asking for shoppers' names means the site is asking them to give personal information before they see the benefits the site offers -- and that could drive shoppers away.
Puma should remove the unnecessary welcome page and allow customers to enter the site immediately. Otherwise, instead of wanting to shop, they may be left wondering "what's up" with Puma's Web site.
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