Nike’s revamped Web site (www.nike.com) proves to be an interesting exercise in frustration. Its mix of Gen-X graphics, celebrity endorsements, products for sale and humor – questionable and otherwise – makes it slow to load and quick to crash.
The home page features a montage of people playing sports. Tennis and basketball are recognizable; the other sports are not. A series of sentence fragments feebly attempts to answer the headline question, “What is sports?”: “the need to move.” “sports is a friend who slaps you on the ass. or smacks you in the chops.” At the end of the list is Nike’s tag line, “just do it.”
The top bar offers such choices as product finder and customer service. Click on product finder and a window entitled “whachuneed?” opens and offers two ways to find a specific product. Otherwise there’s a menu below the bar to see athletic shoes by sport. In addition to obvious options like football or golf, you’re offered “Jordan brand” or “Little Shoes.” And then there are the cryptic choices of “6453,” “The `F’ Word” and “The Alpha Project.”
The mysterious “6453” has a tag line of its own: “sport happens.” If your cursor rolls by the right spot – not clearly identifiable – in the opening graphic, you’ll see a guy high-jumping out of the way. The next choice is for men’s or boys’ running, basketball or cross-training shoes.
“The `F’ Word” offers a similar anticlimax. Here the opening page allows you to click on “Yammer.” A window pops up featuring some bromide like “I am not sure what this is, but an `F’ would only dignify it,” which is duly credited to an “unknown English professor.” “Linkage” are links, of course, which Nike develops with its heavy-handed irreverence. The top of the Linkage page goes: “Sausage links. Cuff links. Chain links. This is none of those. This is linkage, daddy-o.”
Attempts to link to other Nike sites crashed our system.
Nike wants to do more than just sell shoes. It wants to engage visitors and customers with clever copy and graphics and relate with interactive party games. But its attempts at wit don’t even approach the locker-room humor level.
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