The Tendo View

For nearly 100 years, Hallmark has been a trusted brand in America, with familiar slogans like, “when you care enough to send the very best.” But now it’s time for Hallmark.com to morph into a brand of the 21st century.

BRAVO

Hallmark.com is primarily geared toward consumers, specifically the Oprah-watching crowd, and they appeal to this group with holiday-themed gifts, reasonable prices, and lifestyle content courtesy of Hallmark Magazine. But they talk to their business customers, too—they have a small section devoted to business sales and potential franchise owners. And in true Hallmark fashion, they cover all their bases with the holidays, even promoting non-Hallmark holidays like St. Patrick’s Day (hey, Mother’s Day had to start somewhere).

The general organization of Hallmark.com is good, with a clean design and a number of useful tools on the site, including a birthday calendar to help you remember important dates, and even the opportunity to have someone else personalize, address, and mail your cards for you. The frazzled moms who frequent the site can use Hallmark as their personal assistant and PDA rolled into one.

Finally, the company wears its “good corporate citizen” banner in the form of a heavily promoted microsite that explores their partnership with (Product) Red, which helps people with AIDS in Africa.

TRY AGAIN

While the top navigation of the site is logical—divided by broad categories like shopping online, searching for a Hallmark store, and the Hallmark Magazine—the left nav seems like a jumble of topics without much order. Holidays and occasions are mixed in with sections like “need it today” and “memory making.” The subcategories, which let users shop by occasion, recipient, and so on, offer a more intuitive shopping experience and a better organizational structure.

I support a company that knows its audience and goes after it, and clearly this site is targeting middle-aged women, but it almost goes too niche. The Hallmark Magazine, for example, gets a lot of real estate, but with departments like “renew,” “nest,” “connect,” and “nourish,” it has no hope of broadening its appeal to younger women or urban women. The Hallmark channel is worse—when we last checked, it featured star bios on Shirley Jones and Patty Duke, to name a few. Is Angela Lansbury next?

Any company that allows its brand to get this staid—are you in the market for a pastel-colored children’s croquet set?—is taking a big risk.