Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This means that in order to create the winning luxury website, the skills and
expertise required could be summed up in five key areas:
1. Artistic and creative talent (for the design and aesthetics)
2. Technical skill in web and digital media (for the functionality and
back-office)
3. Business and marketing know-how (for the content, communications and
e-retail)
4. Brand dynamics and interpretation skills (for the virtual brand re-
interpretation)
5. Luxury industry experience (for the luxury online positioning)
The reality is that it is almost a mission impossible for a luxury brand
to identify a single individual with a balanced combination of these skills
to qualify him/her as an expert in luxury website development. What this
means is that a luxury brand is almost always required to create a team com-
prising members that exhibit an elevated level of skills in these areas. The
reality, however, is that it is challenging to manage a team of business execu-
tives, artists, and computer geeks since they all speak different languages.
The designers or “creatives” in the luxury sector are generally considered
to exist in their own “floating bubble”, while the technicians or “techies”
are viewed as squares who just don't get it but have to be tolerated because
their role is essential. The business executives and marketers as well as the
brand “interpreters and inspirers”, who are generally considered (or who
consider themselves) as the “know-alls”, usually have a hard time manag-
ing their marketing and e-business objectives in addition to the two afore-
mentioned groups, not to talk of getting to grips with the sense of loss they
often feel (even though many won't admit it) as a result of the newness of
luxury online (see the Introduction to understand better). This is quite a
dilemma, so what options does a luxury brand have to ensure that their web-
site creation and maintenance process is seamless and that their online exist-
ence is optimized?
To begin with, the theory of
The Almighty Webmaster
should be thrown
out of the window (no personal offence to webmasters). At several luxury
companies, the person often in charge of creating and managing the website,
as well as the Internet department or team, is the webmaster. In some other
companies it is the graphics designer while at several other luxury brands,
the Internet team is manned by (hold your breath) the store development
manager who in most cases is still trying to figure out the difference between
blogs and chat rooms. In this scenario, the king of technology, the webmas-
ter, often focuses on the latest technology and the coolest software, applica-
tions, plug-ins and all kinds of Ps and MLs (PHP, ASP, HTML, DHTML,
XML) and underplays the design and aesthetics and practically ignores
(or forgets) the e-communications and the re-creation of the brand's codes
