1. Everyday we are surrounded by enormous things that you need to use to do something. When you go into a building, you use a door. When you work in an office, you use a chair and desk. When you eat, you use dishes, forks and spoons. All those products are shaped, depending upon what the purpose is. So to speak, a purpose and shape of a product are always one set. If there is a shape, there must a purpose of the thing, and vice versa. This indicates that designs help a shape to achieve its purpose in other words.
For example, a chair is made for a purpose of sitting but if that’s the only purpose of a chair, it doesn’t need to have its back, so it can be just like a stump. But now the purpose is complex and varied. There are many purposes in one chair. Nowadays a chair is quite often made not to hurt your back or sometimes it’s specially made so that you can sit in it for a long time. So the material and shape are really considered and devised with great designs.
Just as examples above, graphics is the same as things you use everyday, and it is used to achieve some sort of purpose too. Maybe the purpose is buying something or searching for something. Those needs and desires are reflected everywhere by graphics.
2. Having explained how necessary graphics in business is, now I would like to talk about its effect. As mentioned already, graphics is very important to reflect and stimulate desires and needs of customers and users. But beyond that, business owners have to do something to make their services or products appear special and desirable to their targets. That means, business owners have to impact on them somehow in order to get them to make a purchase and remember them
Now media environment and the way people live have changed dramatically since technology is highly developed. It is very usual to access to the Internet to look for some information and buy what you want, so you spend a lot of time with computers and mobile phones, which have proliferated at accelerated rate recently. In a word, the promotion on the Internet and websites with graphics is crucial to appeal to customers and users.
Sony, on its own website for a new product, BRAVIA, made a good website with great impact and graphics. (http://www.bravia-advert.com/) (Check two movies and the images in the first page) This way of promotion is very arresting and catchy so surely this can be remembered by spectators. So now it’s drawing attentions from marketers and graphic designers. Also, this kind of graphics can be told from mouth to mouth because it has high topicality. In addition, the process of a product getting known by people with this kind of promotion is similar to the way of spreading virus. For that reason, movies like the ones used in Sony’s website are called “Viral Movie”. (MAVERICK JAPAN, n.d.) This method is getting proclaimed these days.
“Humor, wit, and creativity, combined with the randomness of "word of mouth" distribution, causes huge amounts of people to distribute a video among friends, co-workers, colleagues and reach masses of random users that are exposed to a video which promotes a brand. Marketing firms have flourished from this form of distribution and now dedicate specifically to the creation of viral video.” (Wikipedia – Viral Video, n.d.)
This is a little aside but now Flash Video is very popular for its good quality and lightness of a file (Web Creators, Vol. 67, 2007), so it’s used to create such movies as ones in Sony’s website. This website interestingly shows how flash movies are used in a website. Please note that a flash movie is almost in the whole frame of it and the nature of a flash movie is utilized.
(http://www.nike.com/jumpman23/home/index.jsp)
Anyway, let me get to the main subject. The effect of graphics in business websites is quite notable. If you create a good website with great graphics, as the viral movies in Sony’s website, you can highly promote services and produces of your business. People are exposed to thousands of advertisements in a day but they selectively remember just few of them. If you can get them to remember what services and products you offer by graphics, you might be able to increase the number of your customers and users and spread the opportunities for you business too.
3. Now I would like to give another example of graphics used in a little different way. All the advertisements we see everyday are created, of course, for us, end users. But this time, I want to introduce product presentation shown on a website to appeal to a –company-. This company offers products such as robots, machine controllers, servomotors, and AC drives, so they have presentations of their products in their website. (http://www.e-mechatronics.com/showroom/vsr/flash/index.html) I think this is an interesting case that indicates graphics is used between companies for promotion.
When you create a website for your business, you always have to concern about promotion. Of course, a website can be a part of marketing so it should be appealing to target somehow. So, to increase sales, a differentiation strategy is often taken, not only for a product and a service but also for a website.
“Marketing or product differentiation is the process of describing the differences between products or services, or the resulting list of differences. This is done in order to demonstrate the unique aspects of your product and create a sense of value. Marketing textbooks are firm on the point that any differentiation must be valued by buyers” (Wikipedia – Product Differentiation, n.d.)
I visited many websites to find ones I can introduce in my paper. Among the websites I found, I encountered some splendid websites, which are differentiated well.
1. Havianas - http://www.havaianas.com.br/#
2. Orange.com - http://www.orange.com/english/home.php
3. Design Museum - http://www.designmuseum.org/
Those three websites use good graphics enough to draw attention from customers and users. The graphics must be able to gain publicity and improve the brand images too. I think those are well differentiated and promotive.
4. Kah Ra Shin - http://www.kahrashin.com/
The fourth website is another example of one with “viral effect”. It’s a campaign website of BUNROUTS Domination, which is a car action game of Electronic Arts. There are many striking scenes, especially where a face of a screaming man comes up to the whole screen, which I think can strongly impact on people’s mind and where butterflies come out of mouth of a screaming man in a loading screen, which caught my eyes for the entire loading time. This website should be able to gain good publicity and should be promotive.
As you’ve seen, graphics takes a significant role in business. Seeing how it works in websites for promotion with your own eyes, now it must be easy to understand how important and useful it is to make the most of graphics in the world of business. As computer graphics is prevailing now, businesses should utilize it for their marketing strategies and business owners should appreciate its worth.
Work Cited
“Sony BRAVIA The Advert.” Sony. 5 Aug 2007.
“What’s Viral.” MAVERICK JAPAN. 5 Aug 2007
“Viral Video.”Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 5 Aug. 2007. Wikimedia Foundation.
“Jumpman23.com.” Nike. 5, Aug 2007
MDN Corporations. “a Web Design Enforcement Review.” Web Creators, Vol. 67. 1 July. 2007: 43
“Virtual Showroom.” Yasukawa Electronic Corporation. 5 Aug 2007
“Product Differentiation.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 5 Aug 2007. Wikimedia Foundation
“Havianas.” Havianas. 5 Aug 2007
