Raad der Wijzen maakt Europese stand van zaken - CxO

visitor needs to scroll down to see the
entire home page. On the right side of
the home page, there is a very interesting
frame concerning the support center
with a brief description on what the menu
offers. Under the support center, the visitor
will find another important frame
regarding the price indicator. The frame
gives also a small description with a link
to the full price list. The third frame is
about the links that are available for the
other Nikon websites that are not shown
on this homepage. We did miss a search
field that is generally used by the visitor
to directly find what he/she is looking
for. We can also see that after selecting
the French language on the first page, the
visitor can select to switch to the Dutch
language. The English version is not applicable
for the belgian website. We can
conclude that this web site is very graphical
in essence, has a nice lay-out and is
quite easy to use for any visitor.
www.pentax.be
When connecting to www.pentax.be, the
website immediately presents the choice
to select French or Dutch as preferred language
– an English version is not available.
The home page offers three categories
of products: “Photo”, “Life Care” and
“CCTV” (video surveillance system). The
web pages related to the photo products
are sober (white background), in the
home page the new Pentax’s products
are displayed. When clicking on them a
defect is present that ought to be corrected:
Selecting the French version, when
you want to get more information about
three new cameras of the ‘optio’-series,
the link sends you back to the site’s home
page instead of really displaying the in-
formation that is requested or expected.
When clicking on the new Pentax K20D,
you get a lot of information to help you in
your choice, with technical characteristics
but also more accessible information.
The page also contains a picture of a cemetery
to show the quality of the pentax
pictures. The choice of a cemetery as an
example to boast with the quality of this
type of camera is maybe not the most appropriate
one, but we guess they want to
let the picture speak for itself.
A search function is foreseen, which is actually
indispensable for this type of site.
There are also different submenus that allow
quick and fluent navigation. The site
provides lots of information about the different
types of cameras, some tips to increase
the quality of your pictures, some
events and even a game to win Pentax
products. There is also a gallery tab aimed
at showing the wonderful quality of
the Pentax products. The last interesting
tab (“download”) is directed to people
that care to download files to their Pentax
camera (e.g. software upgrades).
The main website of Pentax is easy to use
and designed in a professional way. The
emphasis on pictures to show the capacity
of the pentax products could be more
graphically developed. The performance
and the search tool of the site work nicely.
www.canon.be
The Canon website has a very concentrated
homepage that gives all the necessary
information on a single page. After selecting
the language, the visitor receives
a flash demo of the new Canon products
as a visual presentation. Each time the visitor
hovers the mouse over a menu, the
www.pentax.be www.canon.be
menu turns red like the original Canon color
text. On the right side, we can read the
Canon welcome message.
At the top of the page, we see that we are
browsing the Belgian website. The main
menu is displayed below without any
specific focus on it or other text format.
Moving the mouse pointer over a menu,
the menu becomes red and a brief text
description appears. There is a search
menu that gives the visitor the possibility
to enter a keyword that triggers a number
of results per page . The search result for
EOS gives some 446 hits. Some results
are not explicit as for example “- 2007”
as first result of the EOS search.
Under the visual presentation, there are
three frames. The first one is related to
the Canon actualities. Only text links without
summary of the content are available.
The visitor has to click on it to know
more about the actualities. The second
frame contains a small visual presentation
that links to another Canon’s website.
The visitor does not know what it is about
explicitly. After clicking, we discover that
we reach the Canon’s interactive creative
park web site. The third frame contains
direct access to some interesting links,
for example the software download site.
The links are very large in the sense that
you can choose to explore the EOS professional
web site or to get the latest information
about vacancies at Canon.
At the bottom of the home page, the visitor
has the choice to switch to another
country and also to change to the Dutch
language. The English version is not present
for the Belgian web site. We can
summarize that the graphical presentation
is very simple for this site and maybe
even too simple for a company that sells
cameras.
CxO Magazine | February – March 2008 | www.cxonet.be