Website of the week: Qatar Airways – 01/11/07

Website of the Week Qatar Airways http://www.qatarairways.com/
	Content (0-4): 3
	Pricing (0-2): 2
	Navigation (0-4): 3
	Style/Design (0-4): 3
	Supplementary information (0-2): 1
	Overall incentive to shop (0-4): 3
	Total (0-20): 15
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Website of the week: Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways is the national carrier of Qatar, flying to 70 destinations worldwide. The airline was launched in 1994 and is one of the fastest-growing carriers in the world.

Style

Qatar Airways’ maroon and grey combination stays rooted throughout the site, balanced by a clean white background and neat layout. The product showcase is well laid out although the images could be made enlargeable. The immaculate, contemporary image could perhaps do with a greater touch of local or regional flavour but there’s no questioning the class of the site.

Content and usability

Enter Qatar’s Duty Free site under the airline’s main Inflight Experience section and you’ll be met by Kate Moss gracing the cover of the airline’s inflight magazine. Once the site has your attention, you will find Qatar Airways’ smart product showcase – via a welcome note – led by the features Exclusive onboard, New onboard and Bestseller.

The brief introductory paragraph calls on all shoppers to purchase products onboard (purchasing online is not available) in particular its destination merchandise such as Arabic fragrances and Qatar Airways branded souvenirs. The Privilege Club, Qatar Airways’ Frequent Flyer Program, is also given a mention: “For every $1 spent on board Qatar Airways, you will receive 2 Qmiles. So the more you shop onboard, the more flight benefits you receive.”

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the page, products are displayed neatly in rows of thumbnail images and categorised into women’s fragrances, cosmetics, jewellery, fashion, kids, men’s fragrances, Montblanc, sunglasses, cigarettes, liquor, Arabic fragrance, watches, Chopard, souvenirs and accessories.

Selecting a category brings up the airline’s pre-order Shopping Guide: “In order to make sure that your product is available on your flight, we request you to kindly give us your flight details (at least 48 hours prior to your flight) along with complete description of your choice of products and we shall put your choice onboard for you”. Fax and e-mail details are supplied in order to pre-book but not pre-pay.

Beneath this is a three-pronged, advanced search facility where you can locate an item by means of either a categories drop-down menu or via the drop-down brand name menu (which features over 80 designer brands), or simply by typing in a keyword. In addition, there is an alphabetical list of brand names from Burberry to Yves Saint Laurent. Choosing an item, say, under men’s fragrances allows you a brief description, averagely-sized image, Qmiles (frequent flyer points), item code and price in Qatar Rial and US Dollars. For example, Dior Fahrenheit 32 (US$57) and Sean John Unforgivable (US$52).

Qatar Airways’ maroon and grey combination stays rooted throughout the site, balanced by a clean neat layout.

Cosmetics include a range of high-end brand names such as Bobbi Brown shimmering gloss palette (US$47) and L’Oreal Duo Volume Shocking mascara (US$27).

Arabic fragrance offers a splash of top local brands like Al Qurashi Dehn Aoud Alsafa (US$95) and Khunja Parfum for Men (US$148).

Qatar Airways allows the sale of alcohol onboard its flights, with a few premium labels such as Chivas Regal (US$27) and smaller-sized Johnnie Walker Blue Label (US$38).

Exclusive onboard features nine items sold exclusively for Qatar Airways such as Chopard money clip (US$170), Pianegonda dripping earrings (US$493) and Själ Obre moisturiser (US$164).

New onboard includes a vast list of all the latest offers according to brand, for instance, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue edt (US$43), Guerlain Terracotta Sublime Duo Brush (US$81) and Nokia 3110 Classic (US$167).

The Bestseller category consists of eight of the most popular, miscellaneous items such as John Varvatos Vintage edt (US$56) and Smashbox lip and eyelid primer (US$18).

Navigation, though relatively straightforward, could benefit from a ‘back to homepage’ button.

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