NIKEiD is all about individual style, personal fit and self-expression. So we designed a site that puts the user in control. NIKEiD lets you customize Nike products to reflect your style, spread the news about NIKEiD to friends, and have a say in the site's future offerings. Geared toward adolescents and young adults - for whom self-expression is paramount - the copy and graphics are infused with urban attitude, and the site is rich in features that develop and expand the personalization theme.
Nike, the world's leading sportswear company, has a heritage of one-to-one service. In the company's early years, Bill Bowerman and his team toured the US in a bus, bringing footwear solutions directly to athletes. Through NIKEiD, Nike hoped to restore the tradition of product personalization that made Nike a household name. The site would also provide visitors with an easy way to order personalized athletic wear online, with confidence it would fit right the first time.
We helped NIKEiD develop and deploy an e-commerce initiative that puts personalization at the forefront. The centerpiece is the iD configurator, which lets visitors customize their Nike gear by choosing from hundreds of possible color combinations and adding 3- to 16-character personal iDs. Products change in real time with each design decision a user makes. Another tool, the Fit Consultant, extends NIKEiD's commitment to personalization by recommending shoe sizes based on user input. The site is being built largely on visitor feedback - a clear reflection of NIKEiD's responsiveness to the needs of its customers.
Plug-ins, applets, Flash, heavy page size and other usability barriers were not options for Nike, whose prime requirements were performance and accessibility. We used sophisticated DHTML, JavaScript, JSP, Java Servlets and Oracle to offer 36,000 different photo-realistic product representations to the consumer. A thin-client approach limited page weight to 40 kb for initial download and 20 kb for additional progression through the build process.
Largely because of its success in delivering a world-renowned brand directly to the individual, the NIKEiD site was named Grand Prix winner at the 2001 Cannes Cyber Lions. The iD product configurator has also received considerable attention from the press. But one of the site's most notable successes has been in raising awareness of the importance of personalization in Nike's long-term strategic planning.
