A guide to LOTR merchandising

Hello, fellow readers!


Once again, you guys are back to read my perorate about The Lord of The Rings, I can't help to feel glad about it. Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite websites: The Hobbit Shop. As you can probably guess, this web is a shop where you can buy some items related to the Lord of The Rings, from chess sets and other tabletop games to jewelry or clothing. As you can see, this is a pretty complete shop. The thing I like the most about it is the way that the developers interact with the community and change the products they offer depending on the feedback. This connects with the first kind of interactivity: the feedback. 


Every single item in the shop has got its discussion section, with comments from the buyers and sometimes with the participation of the own sellers, answering questions. This is a classical review section, made to help both sellers and possible buyers, and some of the actual buyers can also receive feedback by asking questions or by receiving support. This feature is the most clear feedback feature that a website can have. In my opinion, every web, business or institution should incorporate this in order to provide better services, according to customers preferences. We'll see the box for comments below every items specific page.


The next main interactivity attribute is the productivity one. As the previous one, this is pretty obvious because it's the main feature of the page: selling and producing monetary benefits. In this page, different providers unite under the same name for selling similar products. This way, everyone wins, because when someone is looking for that kind of products he'll directly go there and start looking for things, instead of dispersing the products and making the customer work more. The whole page is oriented towards the objective of being productive, including the Information Architecture and other interactivity features like the feedback. The Information Architecture is built in a way that will always lead you towards the specific page of a product, where, once again thanks to IA, you'll be able to choose options related to productivity, such as seeing the products, giving feedback or purchasing things.


In terms of personal communication, creativity and control, the page doesn't make a particular effort on focusing on these interactivity issues. However, we've got to take into account that the page itself can count towards an adaptability interactive feature, like the cookies. The server will register your interest in this subject and most probably you will get some advertisements related with it in other pages. Also, this won't happen in the page, because there are no automated advertisements.


Without further delay, I'll close this weeks post. I really hope you've enjoyed it and discovered new things.

See you soon,
Jaime




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