Monday, February 11, 2008

New Gibson USA Site

Posted by Jon in • Guitar Sites

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Only days after reporting about Ibanez’s new US and indeed global site design updates Gibson USA come along and show them how it is done (although they still insist on using spaces in their urls and thus having the ugly %20 in its place!). Gibson already had a very nice looking and usable site, so they have built on this with a bit of realignment rather than reinventing the wheel, a philosophy that no doubt has been taken from their Guitar building methodologies. The new products section is now nice divided on the splash page using bold navigation elements to the 4 main areas, ‘Les Paul’, ‘SG’, ‘Designer’ and ‘Bass’.

Once you make a selection you are taken to the all new product interface which has been thoughtfully developed using flash to enhance the user experience. For instance if you were to navigate to the Les Paul Supreme product page pictured above you have a simple screenshot navigation element in the top right corner where you can either use the arrows to see each photo or hover over the ‘thumbnails’ button which slides all the available thumbnails into view so you can select them individually, a nice touch. This is in the gallery view which is the default, you can then select features for details on finishes, hardware and woods or Media where users are encouraged to upload their own videos with their instrument to youtube, another bit of forward thinking by Gibson. I like the fact that Gibson are combining the power of YouTube to create user endorsements, I don’t think any other manufacturers are doing this yet.

Another addition to the product pages are the social links under each product, StumbleUpon, Facebook etc. I don’t really understand why Gibson need these being such a leader in Guitar manufacturing. Fair enough for blogs such as this where you are building a reader base but Gibson? Maybe these links would have been better placed in their Lifestyle section? That aside though Gibson have proven yet again that they are probably the guitar manufacturer that understands utilising the internet the most.

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