You’ve got a few seconds to convince them that the site has enough value for them to keep using it, because if it doesn’t, the visitors will leave.Īpple’s approach to the homepage has been consistent throughout all the years that the site has been running.
The homepage is one of the most important pages of the whole site because it’s the first, and in many cases the only chance you get to impress the visitor enough to keep them browsing. They don’t have to worry about selling licenses to manufacturers because they’re the only manufacturer, so the key purpose of the website would be to advertise and promote their multiple product lines, as well as selling them through their online store.
This makes the target of Apple’s site much clearer - marketing, selling and providing support for its products to consumers.
On the other hand, Apple is primarily a consumer company, and makes most of its profit selling hardware, like its iPod music players and Mac computers. This means that their business targets pretty much everyone, from home computer owners to developers and enterprises which in turn stretches the purpose of their website to try and serve everyone.
That’s not to say that they don’t sell to consumers - they do, and they have consumer only product lines as well, such as the Xbox gaming console, and of course home users also buy Windows and Office. Microsoft primarily makes its profits from business to business, which mainly consists of selling licenses to its operating system to computer manufacturers and office suites for enterprises. One important thing to note before we proceed to compare these two websites is that each company’s business revolves around different markets. Well, in this article we’ll take a look at both websites for closer examination from a usability point of view. The two giants pride themselves for producing cutting edge consumer and business products, and are leading the developments in software and hardware.īut what about their websites? How do they both compare, and more important, which one is better and more usable? Today we’re going to compare the websites of two monumental companies: Apple and Microsoft.