Welcome to Old America, famous for its great events, innumerable opportunities and of course the old but surprisingly stylish and strong Lee jeans. We say jeans but think Lee; say Lee, and subconsciously think jeans. And of course our thoughts about the jeans are inextricably linked to the era which spawned them. So naturally the entire site is impeccably done in the style of American Retro – soft pastel tones, styled photography and illustrations. Every detail in the design reminds one of the old ragged jeans. Bearing all of this in mind separately, I will start my review of the site by listing its advantages and disadvantages.
I'm not a monster, though I work at (you know where
), and that's why I'll start with what I like about this site:
- Cohesiveness of design - the entire site is done in one style, from the font to the illustrations
- Branding - the site calls to mind subconscious associations and other connections with images of the brand itself
- Consistency of look and feel - practically all of the sites in the Lee family have their own unique design but at the same time give the same atmosphere of reliability and quality, which are the main features of the brand
- Clarity of purpose - the site demonstrates clear cut delineation of ages and sizes bearing in mind the target audience, on whom it is oriented.
It's good to be a kind boy, but to be an honest boy is even better. Though the site has been declared the site of the month, it does have some faults. Well, there's no pretty way to say it. Here's what I dislike about the site:
- Open links - It was a big surprise for me to discover that Lee brand has 10 other sites, which are dedicated to various small tasks, like www.leelocator.com which serves to detect the local stores of the company. These sites and some others, by the way, regularly appears in the left bar though they are not identified in any way and looks like all the other inner links. I think that notifying users before they will leave the site would be a good idea. Check the four links in the “Browse Lee Products” section, all of them leads to the four different sites.
- Errors - Clicking on the banner Win Ultimate Jeans, I encountered a mistake: “Registration Form Error. The registration form hyperlink has invalid parameters. Please make sure that a valid site name and campaign name have been specified.”
- Mysterious Sounding Menu Items - It took me a long time to decide if it's worth it to click on the menu item “The Scoop,” as it's almost impossible to guess where I will find myself after clicking on it. Then, recalling that I was writing an review, I clicked. Camel Trophies' routes sometimes seem to be less surprising. But I'm not about my life, so let's get back to the site: online games and other entertaining information was hidden under “The Scoop” - this was a little bit scary, a little bit tempting and a very confusing link. It's not an easy task to name sections of the site especially when the desire to be original is stronger than the need to be easy-to-understand. Confusing section names can spoil all the work done; this is the case when the only word is of great value in all senses. By the way, on the main menu sections “Juniors,” “Boys,” and “Girls” no special inviting banners can be found, though I really doubt that such kind of stuff is of no value to increase the loyalty of young customers any more.
- Cookie Woes - Be careful on entering the site; if you choose “Enter US Version of Lee Website” it will take you lots of time and efforts if you would like to visit either the European or the Asian version of the site after visiting the American one. The cookie will fight to the utmost not to show you the splash page where you can choose which version to visit. Even typing www.leejeans.com in the address bar of your browser won't help. Since cookies can't be compared to humans, they were deleted and I got the European version of the site www.lee.be … Maybe it was not a good idea to kill cookies? Check it yourself.
Lee USA
Lee
Europe
Lee Asia
Regional sites are not the objects of this review, though I would like to note that the sites were developed with different design, navigation and usability approaches. I'm far away from realizing what the purpose of it was but I can admit that the task for site development was given by different (regional) offices to different contractors without developing and using as well the only web design policy before.
From the point of view of e-commerce – the site has very many disadvantages and cannot be considered well-optimized or sales promotion oriented. Taking into consideration the massive assortment and international status of the brand, as well as the foundation of my experience exploring other sites, I can pronounce the verdict that this site was done to promote offline marketing efforts of the company.
However, the site has vast untapped potential to be converted into an online sales generation machine.
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