The club offers "12 CDs for the price of one", i.e. one gets to choose 7 CDs free on enrollment(free again). The member is then obliged to buy a CD at regular price within a year as per the agreement, upon which he/she gets to choose 4 more CDs for free. Shipping and handling charges, however have to be paid.
The website enables BMG Music Service to (i) enrol new members (ii) allow existing members to choose their music and respond to mailings. Th e primary reason to use it would be convenience : the idea of simply clicking to get CDs, hear sound clips and checking out a great number of selections. The web is a good medium to sell music, indeed.

According to BMG, the advantages of using the website are:

Using it offers you all the convenience of electronic commerce.
One can purchase music 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Search an entire catalog of thousands of music selections.
Browse the catalog by category and expand your entertainment collection.
Review all charges before placing an order.
Access to one's account history is available 24 hours a day.
Listen to a sound clip of your Featured Selection and accept or decline it online.
Pay for orders with a credit card.

Using the website also offers special features and added savings not available through mail offers like big savings on clearance CDs and cassettes, special web offers and promotions, listening to sound samples before your purchases, and chatting with other members in the Classical Club's live chat sessions.

The online club's target market would be music enthusiasts with web-access. They would be collectors or those seeking to build a collection at a bargain. However those looking for the very latest releases at bargain prices would not find them at this site.

As a member of the BMG Music club, I found this website only after I joined the club by mail. I have followed the development of the BMG Online site since September 1997, when it was going through several hiccups and major problems. Initially the site had none of the fancy graphics and the easy to sign in/use features that are apparent to me today. It was not uncommon to get confused and lost in the site. It took a long time to download, was frequently offline (with a "maintenance in progress" explanation), at times it would never download at all. It was very difficult to trust the service on the web, in order to respond to mailing s. One easily got the impression that BMG was just settling into being on the web, and that they were new to this sort of selling.

As of this year (1/98), however, I have found some drastic improvements in features to BMG Music Service on the web. Newcomers are easily guided into the site and it is easier now for members to use the site. The opening page has links for new members to join, existing members to sign in and, curious netsurfers to check the site. I found the link telling members how to use the site (Website Quicktips) to be a good idea. It was useful for members used to old procedures, and hence unfamiliar with the new look site. The earlier online code that one needed to enter was done away with, the site called for member name s/passwords now. Four music categories: Rock & Pop, Jazz, Classical, and Christian have links on the top of the page for guests to take a look-see.

On signing in with a member name and password, we go to a page with links to all categories, all details about the club, merchandise, news, and a search link to find music. We are also welcomed by name. Featured prominently is a recommended selection of the month, depending on what category of music we indicated as preferred when joining. The page is brightly colored and is connected to just about everything on the entire site, including account information, customer service, FAQs, status of agreement etc. On finding a selection one can click on it to add it to an online "shopping cart", which totals all selections.

I found that the BMG Music Service site is still full of glitches, especially during my review tour of it. It took a long time to go to any link from the main page, and some pages stayed blank forever! Also, whenever I tried to respond to my mailing, it informed me that the deadline had passed or that I had already responded -- both were not true. This, just when I thought they had got it all together at BMG. In fact the moment I pointed my browser at the site for the review, up came a message saying " Sorry, maintenance in progress."!!

Thus, inspite of the easy to use features and upgradation of the site, speed still seems to be a problem at BMG. So do response sections and frequent off-line situations. Iwould be very nervous, and disinclined to give my credit card number online here. Even though they try to answer all questions pertaining to the site, a lot of work needs to be done lest users leave in frustration. In this, Columbia House does a bet ter and faster job, probably as result of having had a longer web presence. Speed is of the essence, and BMG Music Service Online falls way short in that department.

2 DuPont

The opening page has DuPont saying that it is "a science and technology based global company of people who make products that make a difference in everyday life." It's a neat "What is DuPont?" statement, with links from each of the key words -- science/tech, global, people, products and everyday life. The graphics behind each word appear in the destination link page. These links elaborate on the those points. Curiously there are a lot of news links below on the main page. We also have a site map link and a search link. The site map indicates where we would go if we clicked on the key words in the statement described above. It opens in a separate window.

Like I said, the web site is chock full of information, describing in detail all facets of Dupont's business. It has details of DuPont's current stock prices, and complete financial updates on the company. The products section is especially comprehensive, beginning with broad classification of the kinds of DuPont products before going down specifically to the brands. Once gain we have product news here, about the various places where DuPont products are being used. There is a pull down menu of DuPont's famous patented trademark brands, indexed to each specific field -- chemicals, fibers etc. Chemical engineering/chemistry grads and related professionals should find the "People" section, with it's job opportunities, very interesting. Needless to say, there is plenty of contact information throughout the site, whether toll free numbers or email.

In each section, there are links to the others and to the home page. The site is fairly easy to navigate, it's just that one might feel bombarded by a ton of info. But that was the idea of the site, to serve as an advertisement for DuPont, a comprehensive one. There are no fancy, flashing graphics nor applets. It's not an exciting or riveting site, but then it's not meant to be that. I feel that the DuPont site is thorough and totally serves it's purpose. Another plus, it downloaded real quick in all sections, no major waits like in BMG.

3 Universal Studios

One expects some neat stuff from Universal, and this site certainly does not disappoint. The opening page immediately grabs your attention, with a very cinematic int roductory soundtrack. This lasts about 10 seconds and surprisingly loads fast everytime! We have the Universal globe logo as the background and have two options: Full graphics or Quick access, to tour the site.

The Full graphics version has just that, real nifty graphics. All of Universal's lines of business mentioned above have links from here. There's plenty of information on what's palying, how to get tickets, theatre locations, and what to expect in the theme parks. All of them are big on graphics and have plenty of moving imagery.

The glitzy downtown image at the center of this page has links from certain pictures to Universal's sweepstakes, interactive studios and featured films. Below, there's a chat section link, and links to auctions, prizes, and the Universal Online store. I should think that children from age 5 up to teenagers/young adults would enjoy the site. There's plenty to do here to keep from getting bored.

I think that this is a good promotional site. It holds one's interest, and keeps one guessing where the links lead to, and what kind of imagery to expect. It's all in true Universal's special effects tradition. There's a high element of interactive imagery here, a lot of demonstration of fancy stuff is available for a click. I especially liked the way the various product links lighted up when the cursor passed over them. I can also say that the site made me aware that Universal was into businesses like memorabilia auctions and concerts. I had not known of this earlier. There is a great looking site map, set against a space background which tells us what we can see on this site, with links right from the map.

One would expect that with all the graphics, Universal would take a long time to download each section. Pleasantly, in all of my visits, that was not the case. Being on the web is a good idea for Universal, the medium has been used effectively here. This is one busy site, and if you like surfing for fun, it's a place to spend a long time without knowing it! Two thumbs up.

4 CNN

The site is actually titled CNN Interactive and opens with the top stories of the hour each time. The main page has the headlines, with graphic icon links on the left side to various sections: US world news, weather, sport, travel, sci-tech and others. There are prominent icons for "Allpolitics", the political news and CNNfn, the finance news sections. Right on top is a changing applet telling us what is interesting in certain sections. Icons for news in Spanish (CNN en Espanol), and for searching CNN are there too.

As we scroll down the main page, we find the Top Stories -- all the sections links (mentioned above) with the headings of the articles contained in them. All of these are linked to the relevant section or article. Since the latest significant news takes the front center page, we find the previous headlines on the right in smaller print or shifted to the US/world news sections.

The best feature of this site is it that it's always current. This is just as a news site should be. I have seen updates on reloading every 15 minutes, during the coverage of Princess Diana's crash, and during the standoff with Iraq in mid-February. Incidentally, I found out about the Diana accident, about 20 min after the crash in Paris when I reloaded the CNN page. Links to previous articles are there. The site makes use of a lot of fancy technology, which make for lasting impressions. Video clips of major news stories are always available, sometimes in a choice of QuickTime or VXtreme streaming video. We also find a lot of sound clips for quotes in any major news story.

There are no points for guessing why there are so many advertisements o n the site. With such a high degree of quality coverage and ease of access, net users flock to the CNN site. It certainly makes a good advertising vehicle. CNN Interactive also offers Custom News, a feature where users get to read only the news they want, on registering for this service. They define a profile of what they would be interested in, and that only that news shows up on the user's browser everytime he/she visits CNN.

Besides news, the CNN site has a lot of useful features like the cur rency convertor, book reviews, message boards and travel tips. It's a treasure trove of information, current or dated. I'm a fan of it's weather section, which is quick and covers just about any place on earth with accuracy.

As a regular user of the site, I have never been disappointed with CNN Interactive. It has never failed to download quickly, and has always delivered on what one expects from CNN - speed in news coverage. I go to the site about six to eight times a day, for updates on news and the weather. There's always something of interest to read in the sections too. This is the sort of site that will have many repeat users, and often. It becomes a habit, and a CNN site user is going to come back for more.

Send me mail

Back to main page