BRAVO

The microsite is the online equivalent of the car itself—small, thoughtfully organized, well designed, and fun.

Visitors can view the site accompanied by a John Cleese-esque narrator and/or with letterbox subtitles, making it suitable for both home and office viewing. It opens in a garage with the arrival of a pair of Smart Fortwos. The user can continue in a linear manner through the various chapters—comfort, safety, space, fuel economy, and features—or experience it chapter by chapter through tabs at the top of the page. Regardless of which method one chooses, the scene transitions are especially slick as the site flows from one chapter to the next with lateral screen wipes from scene to scene.

The quiz elements and visuals are surprising at times, and captivating enough to inspire multiple viewings. In addition, the entire experience runs just a few minutes, even if viewed through to its entirety from start to finish.

Extra credit goes to the production team for the voiceover interruptions in which the narrator takes a call and orders tea or lunch when the screen is left idle.

TRY AGAIN

The major shortcomings of the site, to the extent that these can be characterized as such, are its regionality—the call to action to arrange a test drive or request a brochure only apply to U.K. residents—and the fact that it lacks the requisite social media tags to give it additional viral impact. Ideally, the site would have been set up to reconfigure the final call to action and sub links based on the IP address of its viewer, so that North American buyers, for example, could also request a brochure or set up a test drive. With no additional tweaks, the site would work as is for English-speaking countries, and it would have been relatively easy, given the voice over/letter box format, to translate the experience into additional languages.

Further, while the site has made the rounds on various automotive message boards and blogs, it could have had wider reach if it was set up for easy social tags like Digg, Delicious, and Facebook.

Overall, the site hits a bull’s-eye for its target demographic, leaves a striking impression of how far off base some of these misconceptions are about the Smart Fortwo, and reinforces the brand voice for Smart.

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.

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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.