Ethan Allen Website- Lesson in Interaction
Ethan Allen added a style quiz to its website recently. While there is nothing scientific about it, it is a great example of a website encouraging visitors to not just browse but to actually interact. Once you take the quiz and are assigned your “look” (my results said that my look is “glamour”), there is a link to explore products which takes you to the Ethan Allen products that best fit that look.
While I am not Ethan Allen’s target audience, I did appreciate that they are encouraging interaction and inciting individuality by assigning quiz results. Instead of just selecting a sofa from a page, you are shown the pre-selected pieces that fit your individualized style. That’s just good marketing.
From a coding perspective, this quiz probably cost Ethan Allen very little but they will see great ROI due to increased word of mouth (I found out about the style quiz via Twitter and retweeted accordingly) and by converting quiz takers to customers through meeting their stylized preferences.
Take the quiz yourself. It’s fun.
Author: Alexandra Gibson
Alexandra is the CEO of Gibson Design Management and Managing Partner of interior design firm, Gibson Design Group. When she's not busy trying to build an empire, you can find Alexandra riding a horse, giving back to the community, playing with her Scottie, McCord, or drinking a martini (preferably not all four at once).
Follow Alexandra on TwitterTags: Ethan Allen, interaction, Marketing, style quiz, Twitter, website, Word of Mouth Marketing
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 10:13 am and is filed under Marketing, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 12th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
This is a big, progressive move for them. Remember their old website? I’m pretty sure some pieces of furniture were only represented by a sketch or a very small picture. It was frustrating to browse online, which I like to do before stepping into a store.
They really seem to be trying to appeal to a younger market this year. I’m probably their target market, but the ads that debuted last season were a little too obvious – hipster types wearing black leather and carrying guitars were lounging around on their pieces. One showed a cool Anthropologie wearing model riding a bike in a dining room. I’m not buying it. It’s still very overpriced and I don’t like their sales tactics (pushing you to finance what you can’t afford).
November 14th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I find their web site awful. hard to search. too much scrolling. too many places to click to find what you want. Maybe they have a neat app, but other than that, their web site is TERRIBLE.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Abbey,
Thanks so much for your comments. I wholeheartedly agree about the setup of their site and you are right, a neat app will not make up for a website that is difficult to navigate. I hope that Ethan Allen takes your suggestions and brings the rest of their site up to par with the progressiveness of their app that encourages interaction. Keep the great comments coming!