Analyzing Skittles.com - A Bad Online Strategy Decision

Listserves and tech blogs have be buzzing with awe about the new Skittles.com. The website is a javascript hover with links that lead you to various social networking and social media sites. It is generating the buzz that the company probably wants, and driving traffic to their site. With the amount of emails and tweets I have seen about this today alone, I can say the company is probably pretty happy with the results the are getting.

Whomever planned this out was smart enough to take SEO into consideration. As seen below, there is an "SEO" div with a clear path to all the subpages on the site. The paragraph wrapped in an H1 tag will let search engines know that specific line is of greater importance to other content on the site (although there really isn't any).

<div id="seo">
	<a href="/default.htm">Home</a>
	<a href="/products.htm">Products</a>
	<a href="/videos.htm">videos</a>
	<a href="/pics.htm">pics</a>

	<a href="/chatter.htm">chatter</a>
	<a href="/friends.htm">friends</a>
	<a href="/contact.htm">contact</a>
	<a href="/site_map.htm">Site map</a><br/>
	<h1>Skittles.com is home to everywhere you already are. Yes, it sounds strange, but it's true. See our Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr pages all through our website. You can always get information on the products you love like Original Fruit Flavor Skittles, Skittles Crazy Cores, Skittles Sour, Skittles Tropical and Skittles Wild Berry. You can also watch the tv commercials that everyone loves on the Skittles YouTube Page or see original artwork on the Flickr page.</h1> 
</div>

 

All in all the strategist behind this project or PR stunt had the basics that any online strategist should have in mind when (re)developing a site:

1) Optimize your website content for search

2) Drive traffic to your site through earned media

3) Integrate your site with external sites to make it easier for people to find your content

But, this project breaks one of the all three of my golden rules of online strategy. Just as a refres

1) If you can't measure it, it is not worth your time.

2) If it doesn't lead you towards the long term vision for your online presence, invest in something that does.

3) If it is not usable by all your constituency groups, rethink what you are doing. 

I will break down my analysis of the site by rule:

Here is why I feel Skittles.com has broken all of these rules.

Web Metrics

There is no trackig code on this site! At a bare minimum, site administrators should be monitoring how many people are visiting their site, where they are coming from and what content they are reading.

Long Term Planning

To often we plan our online strategy around campaigns, and don't focus on the big picture, long term strategic vision for an organization's online presence. I cannot see the site as it is being part of the long term vision for Skittles of any of the Mars Snackfoods brands.

Imagine a world where corporations managed their entire online presence on external sites? What would their investors think?

Usability

Usability is huge in my book. This is the least useful site I have ever seen. Skittles is forcing their constituents to create profiles on three different websites to interact with them. They could have easily built a website that integrated with Facebook via a Facebook Application, feed information to and pull information from Twitter via the API, and posted Youtube videos to their site via an API or embedding the code. I see this site as a great diservice to their customer base who is not engaged in all of the online communities they link to.

I label this the worst strategic decision I have seen online in a long time. Kudos to Skittles for their valiant effort, but they feel a bit short.