Online Branding of Burton Snowboards

Burton Snowboards is a rider driven company that is dedicated to selling the best snowboard equipment. In 1977, Jake Burton founded a private company that specializes in a product line aimed at snowboarders and has become the world’s leading manufacturer in snowboards today. The company also sells hard goods, outerwear, and accessories.

Besides selling merchandise under the Burton brand, there are also sub-brands of the company. These sub-brands include Anon Optics (snowboard goggles and eyewear), R.E.D. Protection (helmets and body armor), Analog Outerwear, and Gravis Footwear. This makes the company a house of brands. A house of brands is where a company can market their own main brand and have separate brand names for their other companies. In this case, Burton has its own line of products on its website and has other websites set up for its sub-brand companies of Anon Optics, R.E.D Protection, Analog Outerwear, and Gravis Footwear.

The brand management of Burton prohibits retailers from selling their products online, which allows the company to have complete control over what is sold online and allows consumers to know that they are dealing directly with the company. This reinforces the fact that Burton is trying to control the image of their brand and they only have a small number of stores to create loyalty.

Burton manages their website for easy navigation to products for their customers. The URL choices for each domain name are unique. A domain name is an effective strategy for online branding as the company should choose a name that is unique and easy for people to remember and highlights the products in the ecommerce store. Burton Snowboards and its other sub-brands such as Gravis Footwear use the name of the brand in the web addresses (http://www.burton.com/ and http://www.gravisfootwear.com/). A simple web address that uses the company’s name allows viewers to guess the website name without looking it up. The visitor then simply knows the address and is able to type it into the browser.

Burton Snowboards does an effective job in selling its merchandise online. When customers enter the Burton website, they can select what category they would like to see such as women’s, men’s, boys, girls, or others. Under each of the categories the website has the specific products labeled making it easy for customers to choose what merchandise they would like to look at.

Burton Snowboards uses a unique approach in how the merchandise is set up to view. For example, when looking at the snowboards in the website they have all the boards displayed next to each other but when the mouse scrolls over them the one selected pops out of the line of snowboards and tells you how well the board handles in certain types of snow and when you are doing tricks. The site tells customers how well a certain type of snowboard handles in the snow by using a meter that has a line that goes up and down on certain categories for each snowboard. The technique is also used with the support of Burton Snowboard boots. The company also had dollar signs above the line of snowboards to tell customers which end of the line of snowboards was more or less expensive.

Burton’s strengths include the website design of the company and easily navigation of their website to find products. The Burton Company has created a unique online experience for shopping for snowboards and other accessories and apparel. They use colors that compliment each other, make it easy to find the products that a customer may want, and use features that show the support and quality of the specific products.

The meter support and quality for their snowboard and boots line differentiates their product from other competitors and strengthens their online branding. The website uses special scrolling options for seeing apparel by clicking on a type of apparel style to see the apparel choices.

Logos are another effective strategy in Burton Snowboards online branding. Having a logo that appeals to your audience, creates a lasting impression in the mind of the consumer, and has a global appeal is a meaningful and helpful way of online branding. Burton Snowboards has used its logo to make communication easier as viewers easily relate to these images.

On Burton’s website, they use their logo in their “Learn to Ride” section of the website. They use different colors for their logo for viewers to click on whether they are a man, woman, or kid. With this specific page, Burton’s support of their logo has an additional effect on the viewer as they remember the logo and it creates brand recognition.

There were minimal weaknesses that I found with Burton Snowboards website and their online branding efforts. I found that after clicking on a specific category to see snowboarding merchandise and viewing the available products when I wanted to go back to the list of the accessories available it would not bring me back to that page but to the main website page. This then made me have to go through the process of picking the merchandise again and could create frustration for consumers. If consumers become frustrated with the functionality of a website, they may be inclined to shop elsewhere or give up on buying a certain product. Another weakness that I found was that Burton Snowboards website did not have any links to any of their other sub-brands. Since Burton Snowboards does not have any links to their other brands, customers may not realize that Burton Snowboards is associated with Anon Optics, R.E.D Protection, Analog Outerwear, or Gravis Footwear. If the company had links associated with its sub-brands they may be able to increase profitability and increase the amount of traffic coming to their site.

Overall, I found that Burton Snowboards was effective in their online branding. By using unique features such as a meter to tell how much support or traction a specific product would give was different approach for Burton Snowboards to take. This style strengthened their credibility on how much they know about snowboarding equipment. By organizing the company products in categories and using a memorable domain name helps customers easily navigate and remember Burton Snowboards website. However, by changing the feature that does not take customers back to the merchandise list but to the homepage and adding links to its sub-brands website may help Burton Snowboards online branding strategy in the long run. Burton Snowboards has created a strong brand image and brand recognition. When people see the Burton logo or hear the name Burton Snowboards, people automatically connect the brand to a company that is knowledgeable in their field and is of superior quality.