Excessive Flash and pop-ups overshadow Puma.com's cool cachet.

IN A NUTSHELL

Have you noticed that most corporate sites for fashion retailers are big on both flash and Flash? No doubt they want supreme control over the visual branding, so heavy use of Flash is at least half explained. But if branding is so important, why aren't these companies thinking about the experiential aspects of the brand? Unfortunately, Puma.com looks good, but the site is poorly thought out and confusing.

BRAVO

The red. The white. The 1950s modern-retro rounded-corner images. We get it! Puma is cool. And cool people wear Puma. Football, fashion, and lifestyle messages ooze from every carefully placed pixel. If you like to look at a website without interacting, Puma.com delivers the "yeah, I'm one of the cool kids" sensation from your eyeballs right to your retro-sneaker-clad toes.

TRY AGAIN

Has anyone at Puma clicked around their own site? You might well wonder as unwelcome pop-ups and new Puma windows spawn like retro '70s style has among fashionistas everywhere. As if that poorly conceived coding weren't enough, Puma.com actually broke my Firefox "new tab" hotkey. How? Well, who knows. But what we do know is that if you opt for so much Flash to control your site's look, you should put just as much thought into your site's wireframe to control the feel, too.