Founded by French tennis champ Jean-René Lacoste, the old crocodile brand (yes, according to the brand owners it’s a croc) has maintained consistently

Lacoste.com is ambitious, and rightly so. The splash page offers the visitor a choice between 13 sites by country flag or language. Lacoste's website development team demonstrates a mastery of Flash technology that well suits the fashion industry. Forget the debacle of Boo.com back in the dot-com days, this time the technology does work—most of the time—and supports the brand in a way that html cannot. Even the frame of the media player is branded and subtly animated.

However the very same imagery could correctly support a dozen other luxury brands. There’s not much to differentiate this site from any other. Would you know where you were if you covered the crocodile logo? It is a simple and revealing test that Lacoste.com doesn’t pass. The strength and durability attributes of its products do not transpire in any way from the website. The internal pages do their best to communicate the brand attributes—the brand stands for "comfort and solidity […], which constitute its uniqueness"—but it rings a little hollow on such a generic site.

Technically, the site downloads smoothly (although it hiccupped a few times). However it can take forever to load, forcing us to refresh the page manually. Lacoste.com does score high in terms of usability, in spite of the design choice of locating the navigation bars on the top and bottom, which is somewhat less intuitive than a conventional left-side menu. At times, the visitor can be lost looking for the right information.

There is no searching for clothing and other brand extensions into footwear, eyewear, perfumes and watches. The seasonal collection is prominently displayed, while offering plenty of space for ancillary promotional tools such as fashion shows. But the website is not used for e-commerce and does not compete with its traditional distribution channels. Instead, it extensively covers the world of Lacoste, from design to advertising and sports events, as would an online brochure.

It is debatable if luxury brands such as Lacoste should be sold online. Lacoste's argument is implicitly made when, next to a list of retailers, the site displays a finely branded retail store, i.e., its flagship on the Champs-Elysées. Beyond the durability factor of a Lacoste product, you must enjoy an experience that stimulates the five senses. By contrast, even with Flash technology, an e-commerce remains rather… flat.

Despite all its qualities, it is hard to overcome the missed opportunities that Lacoste.com chose not to exploit: the branding seems off the mark, and the site does not actually sell. Peut mieux faire.