By Philip Tan
Like much of its competition, the web site for Warner Brothers is
visually exciting and animated at all times, hitting the viewer with
a barrage of sounds, kinetic images and annoying advertisements. However,
the site maintains a coherent visual design that is reminiscent of
the darker, stylized designs of WB's television logo and promos. Cross-promotion
varies from sophisticated mini-animations to annoying, generic rectangular
ads that link to other standalone, affiliated sites. The magazine
format presents repeat visitors with a changing subset of newer WB
properties, while menus and screen-sized pages hide the size of WB's
web presence by providing viewers with only a small array of options
at any time.
Visitors to the WB web site need to click often and be browser-savvy.
Obtrusive sponsor advertisements pop-up in windows frequently and
load quickly. Viewers need to install a sizable number of plug-ins
to experience this web site fully, from virtual set tours to branching
animations. WB has a considerable amount of web-exclusive properties
from original Flash-animated series to material from the affiliated
Atom Films. The audience for this site appears to range from teenagers
to professionals with children--the 'Kids' section has innovative
and entertaining interactive read-alongs of stories using older characters
such as Scooby-Doo and Looney Tunes.
Frequent visitors may register a small amount of biodata to participate
in message boards and online chats with WB stars. The moderated chats
have the dynamics of an interview written by committee, where the
questions are relatively generic compared to the responses from the
stars. The message boards are topic-based and quickly go off-track,
often leading the discussion towards non-WB properties. Finally, a
'Shop' section directs visitors to affiliated sites such as Wal-Mart
and ebay to purchase WB merchandise.
This web site is a good and expanding effort on WB's part to experiment
with possibilities online. Possible improvements would include week-at-a-glance
schedules and greater integration of oddly separate web sites such
as WB Movie Mail and Kids' WB!