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Allsports

Replica football shirts have become big business, and doesn’t sports kit

retailer allsports know it. The company’s new transactional web site

majors on the fact that you can buy your team’s shirt online, with 17

clubs and two international sides to choose from. ’Replica Shirts’ is also

the most prominent link on the home page, but the site also features news,

competitions, a store finder and a members’ area. Football fans looking to

buy kit online should be well pleased, with the exception of Coventry City

supporters.

Web address: www.allsportsretail.co.uk

Client: allsports

Developer: Walsh Simmons Interactive

Acco

International Office products supplier Acco has launched an online guide

to office management, incorporating brands such as Rexel Accodate and

Eastlight.

The site doesn’t require plugins or the latest version of Netscape or

Internet Explorer. Product pages are divided into Business Machines,

Computer Products and Document Management.

Web: www.accoeurope.com

Client: Acco

Developer: Information Hyperlink

Independent Online

New Independent, new advertising and now a web site. Having started life

on AOL, the web site arrives hot on the heels of the newspaper’s

relaunch.And it’s also an IE 4.0 channel.

’The Independent Online’ is just that in the clearest terms possible. It

is all there, including tabloid supplements.

Not only is it the paper repurposed online, the online version actually

looks very much like the printed Independent with all its white space -

possibly more so than any other paper on the net.

Designed as a seven-day operation, the ’Independent on Sunday’ does not

really make an appearance. It all looks very good, even down to the

wallpaper, which features the familiar swooping eagle.

With a small amount of frames on the front page, it is broken down into

familiar sections of news, home and foreign, right the way through to

columnists and letters.

A click on home news, for instance, takes you through to one-paragraph

summaries, click on any single story and the whole story is revealed.

No matter how deep you are into the site, the home menu in the frames

window stays with you to help you navigate.

What is perhaps quite surprising is that there is very little advertising,

some pages featuring none at all.

It is understood that advertising will be increased in the site as

original content is developed.

Web: www.independent.co.uk

Client: Newspaper Publishing

Developer: In-house

Design Studio

World of Interiors magazine already has a web presence, known as ’World of

Interiors Daily’, through the main UK site of publisher Conde Nast

(www.condenast.co.uk). The new site, ’The Design Studio’, is an entirely

different proposition from that news-based offering, because it gives

designers the chance to buy online. Seven suppliers are currently offering

their wares. Bronwen Buckeridge, Conde Nast’s On-Line interior design

manager, says the company is looking to get as many manufacturers involved

as possible. ”It’s all about volume,” she said. ”We have a diversity of

companies covering very different areas of the marketplace, making it

useful from a designer’s point of view.”

Users can browse through collections, make up their own swatches and order

swatchboards. Buckeridge claimed that although the site is transactional,

Conde Nast’s role is still essentially that of a media owner. ”The orders

go direct to the manufacturers,” she said. ”For us, it’s like creating a

hub for interior design on the web.”

The company will be promoting the new site through its print magazine and

through World of Interiors Daily. Buckeridge says that manufacturers are

keen to get involved because of the targeted nature of the title’s

readership. ”We have a brand with a position in the marketplace to achieve

what we want online. Manufacturers are very excited about it. A lot of

designers have web connections, but this is the first thing on the web for

them.”

Web address: www.thedesignstudio.com

Client: Conde Nast On-Line

Developer: In-house

scrum.com

What is it with financial services companies and rugby union? Following

Allied Dunbar’s launch of a rugby fans’ site to tie in with its rugby

sponsorship, Save & Prosper is sponsoring new offering scrum.com. The

site, created by EMAP Online, covers both British club rugby and the

annual Five Nations tournament.

It includes news, results, reports, player profiles and statistics, as

well as games and quizzes. Scrolling news headlines at the bottom of the

screen are a nice touch, as is a second-by-second countdown to the 1999

World Cup.

Web: www.scrum.com

Client: EMAP Online

Developer: EMAP Online/ WEB/Millennium Marketing

Cheestrings

Cheestrings Twister is a colourful and well-designed site full of games, a

comic strip and a screen saver, all featuring the fun Cheestrings animated

character.

The web site is part of an integrated marketing roll-out to mark

Cheestring Twister’s launch and follows on from the original Cheestrings

web site, which claimed over 150,000 hits and was a UK Yell Award

finalist.

Web: www.cheestrings.co.uk

Client: Golden Vale

Developer: Pilot Interactive Media

Lloyds

For several months, Lloyds Bank customers looking for a web site will have

found only a ’site under construction’ page. That site has now been

launched, but will come as a disappointment to consumers. It’s design and

functionality are simple and effective, but the current sections will

leave many cold. The ’enquiries’ section reveals that Lloyds will launch

its internet banking service next spring. However, a chance has been

missed to offer this service to customers on the opening page of the site.

Otherwise, a clear, informative site which has avoided the trap of being

too high-tech or graphics heavy.

Web: www.lloydsbank.co.uk/

Client: Lloyds Bank

Developer: In-house

Holyman Sally Ferries

Times have been tough for cross-channel ferry operators. Price competition

in the last few years has left holiday-makers and duty-free shoppers

laughing, and operators casting about for USPs to add value to their

trips. Holyman Sally Ferries has chosen to give extra value to clients

over the web, with a new site to help them plan their trip. A key feature

of the site is a route planner, which produces a rough map of a chosen

journey and a breakdown of roads to take - handy for the clueless

traveller.

A simple fare calculator is available, as is a competition screen which

requires the usual data capture information to enter. There are plans to

add hotlinks to tourist authorities, hotel chains and other travel

companies to make it a ’one-stop journey planner’. For the traveller

tossing up two equally priced crossings, this site might just tip them

towards Holyman.

Web: www.holyman-sally.com

Client: Holyman Sally Ferries

Developer: Aspen Direct

FoodNet

Gourmets, gastronomes, epicures and lunch-obsessed Revolution reporters

are the obvious target market for ’FoodNet’, the new culinary section of

FutureNet. Undoubtedly the best idea on the site is Larder Challenge,

wherein hungry punters with scantily-populated kitchens are given recipes

which use only a tin of spaghetti hoops and a pair of pop tarts, or

whatever they happen to have lurking in their cupboards.

The problem with FoodNet is that a number of the sections don’t deliver

what they promise: click on ’Restaurant Guide - find the perfect place for

the best evening out’ and you don’t actually get a restaurant guide as you

would expect, merely the chance to add a restaurant’s details to a

restaurant guide; similarly, ’search through our definitive selection of

wines’ takes you, rather bizarrely, to a eulogy to Safeway’s.

Web address: www.futurenet.com/foodnet

Client: Future Publishing

Developer: In-house

BNFL

BNFL has redesigned its web site as part of an overhaul of its entire

communications strategy. The new web site is themed to fit in with BNFL’s

current ad campaign, which you will be pleased to hear is tagged: ”Where

science never sleeps”.

The redesigned site, which is the first part of a two-year web development

programme, is designed to act as an information source for both business

and the public.

The home page opens with a series of coloured spinning globes, each

representing a centre designed for a specific audience and in keeping with

the ”never sleeps” theme. Click on the visitors centre, for instance, and

a small video of a train crashing at 100 mph can be viewed, while the

spinning navigation spheres move to the top of the page and continue to

spin.

Other centres on the site include a press centre for journalists and a

scientific centre for academics and scientific researchers.

Web: www.bnfl.com

Client: BNFL

Developer: Jamrach and Sons

John Charcol

Many web sites look to swell sales in a fairly direct way, either by

allowing online transactions, or by providing a phone number for a

relevant sales person.

Independent financial advisor John Charcol has nothing to sell in such a

direct sense, choosing instead to build its brand in such a way that it

will eventually coax web surfers into its offices. Its new site holds

information on a broad spectrum of financial matters, offering advice that

is reasonably detailed, but not quite detailed enough to allow you to make

a decision on a mortgage, for example. It also has useful add-ons such as

a mortgage calculator and a push-email service which will alert users to

any changes in information.

A rather complex data capture form is included in the site, but this is

for advising purposes more than for direct marketing.

Overall, the site gives John Charcol an aura of trustworthiness, and the

tone is decidedly ”no-obligation”, which is exactly what customers who are

likely to be nervous about a big decision will want.

Web: www.johncharcol.co.uk

Client: John Charcol

Developer: port80.

This article was first published on revolutionmagazine.com