Nike v. Puma

While creating personal shoe designs on each of the Nike and Puma sites I was able to fully understand the consumer experience. I created accounts for both websites in order to save my work and go back to it later.

I enjoyed the NikeID site more because it seemed to me to be more relevant and directly related to the shoe-buying experience. The Nike designs were more appealing to my personal style and interest so it kept me more focused. I did experience a few technical difficulties, however, when I was unable to save my first two shoe designs. From the consumer standpoint this situation was extremely frustrating because I had to start the design over two times until I finally decided to give up and wait for another day. So although I like the visual design and set up of the Nike website more, the Puma site was actually easier to use. I also thought Nike stood out because you can also take part in the creation and design of certain clothing and sport items as well.

Nike’s website headline for the shoe design section read, “Dominate in colors all your own.” I felt that this fit well with Nike’s image of top sporting equipment and appeal. This also tied in with the option of picking the specific shoe design based on specific sports teams’ colors. This was not an option I took advantage of but I know many people who would fully appreciate it. NikeID also offers an in-person studio where customers can make appointments to try on the shoes in-house. This is also a very creative idea, especially for those customers who are willing to pay top dollar for their sneakers. This NikeID Studio is connected to big names like Ludacris.

The website itself was full of audio and visuals that catch attention but can also drive you a little crazy after awhile. There were a lot of pop-up description boxes and flash animation.

One positive part of the experience was the option to start with a blank shoe design or look at other original designs that were submitted by customers like yourself. You can also design any type of shoe you want, not just one or two different styles.

The Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ website was a much more unusual experience for me than past online shopping has been. I did not like the concept/idea of relating shoe design with cooking. Logically it makes sense, I guess, but when I am looking at shoes, I do not also want to be thinking about ingredients that I will be putting in my mouth. Puma’s website opened with the heading, “Grab your chef hat and preheat your creativity.” It’s an original idea, but it just threw me off a little. The whole look of the website, from the opening photos to the commentary really did not make is seem like a shoe supplier. If I didn’t already know what Puma was when I saw the homepage, I would probably think it was the website of a restaurant. In support of the website, at least I can say Puma kept the concept constant throughout.

Puma’s actual shoe design process was easier in most ways. Unfortunately there were only three styles to choose from. And although the process of creating and saving the design was easier, I was less satisfied with the graphics, colors, angles of view, and event the lay out of options. When a color selection was made it looked a lot different on the shoe in the picture than actually in the color sample. The shoe design was also split up into three sections. This option added more available combinations but in some ways provided too much to do and not all the colors matched.

The Nike shoe design also allowed for the customer to click directly on the section of the shoe they wanted to change. That was useful because most consumers don’t particularly care what the company has decided to name each individual part of the shoe, they just want to get their job done in the easiest and most enjoyable way possible. The Puma site, however, did not provide that option. Instead there was a list on the side that held the names of each part along with the colors you could choose for it. It took some guessing and clicking around, but eventually it worked out.

The two companies had slightly different approaches to their customized athletic shoe websites but the overall ideas were the same. It is hard to differentiate a service like that because for the most part the same options will be offered. Even if a competitor was offering a characteristic that you didn’t, it probably would not take long for the opposite company to offer their own variation of the same thing.

I did enjoy the Nike experience more, even with the technical problems. My own personal taste has everything to do with that decision. Companies must really look at their target audience and main customers in order to create the right website environment and experience, otherwise a lot can be lost.