SILVER: Ecommerce Channel
BerettaUSA.com
Beretta is not the best-known brand. But as a pop-up on its home page proudly boasts, its signature M9 pistol is the same one issued standard to the U.S. Armed Forces — including its first customer, Navy SEAL Team Six. (It’s just a coincidence that BerettaUSA.com won a Silver two days after the SEALs took out Osama bin Laden.)
WHY IT WON A SILVER AWARD: From the gorgeous lifestyle hero shots, strong product photography and tie-ins with the print catalog and the Beretta Gallery bricks-and mortar-stores, this is an ecommerce site that really showcases the merchandise and captures the power and appeal of the Beretta brand.
The site’s product quick view, perpetual cart and checkout process are all excellent — best of breed. “The same clean and encouraging process that outdoor sports and apparel customers have come to expect at all the big sites in this market,” commented one judge.
The site also has an excellent navigational solution for guiding visitors by “lifestyle,” as in the sort of shooting they’re into, as well as product category.
WHY IT DIDN’T WIN A GOLD AWARD: The copy could use some tweaking throughout. Some of the copy is solid, but the presentation isn’t very strong. One judge said Beretta could use headlines, subheads, bullets and photo captions, as examples, to convert its offline copy into online copy. — TP