|
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: Business Week ebiz | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 |  | |
 | |
 |
|||||||||||||||
Baby Sites: Still Taking Baby Steps Cruising three popular virtual communities turned up little more than disappointments and dead ends The Big Thinkers of the Internet believe the new medium lets us build virtual communities that are in many ways as vital as the real ones we live in. We have always looked to communities to help us with details as small as buying a CD and as important as raising our children. Hillary Rodham Clinton is famous for pointing that out. So as baby and parenting sites like iBaby (www.ibaby.com), BabyCenter (www.BabyCenter.com), and BabyZone (www.babyzone.com) emerge to lead one of the Web's hot trends, it's worth asking: Can new communities measure up to the old in the most vital job communities do? In a word, no. For good or ill, the Internet isn't really equipped to serve busy moms or dads looking for sound child-rearing advice. After looking at three leading baby sites, that conclusion came easy. For fast, helpful answers, call your pediatrician, order a good book from Amazon.com, or ask your neighbor. If you're shopping for a gift, I'd take a trip to Toys 'R' Us or the department store over baby-oriented Web sites. Raising a baby still takes something more like a real village than an iVillage.
And while I was at it, I went shopping, since these sites are based on the idea that commerce and content related to specific interests should be at one online destination. Of the three, only iBaby came close to providing enough information or help to make it worthwhile -- maybe -- to return. And even that site fell far short as a shopping destination. PRINT-WORTHY HELP. iBaby, thanks to its alliances with ParentSoup and ParentsPlace, scored when I asked for information. It readily explained atopic dermatitis and reviewed treatments that included even home remedies. In the party arena, ParentsPlace led me to an idea for a "bubble-making" party that I liked enough to print out. I may even try it -- if I can get out the blow-up baby pool. But when I tried shopping, iBaby was weak. Despite a front page that makes the site look like a mall unto itself, selection is limited. Plus, annoyingly, some of the product categories I clicked had no items listed. And some pictures of other merchandize were fuzzy. Why not just leave them out? It would speed up the download. BabyCenter provided a more positive shopping experience. It has a feature that others should copy: consumers review and rate products. Unfortunately, not all items have reviews. And just as at iBaby, product selection in some areas is too limited. I like variety in price and selection. If I want a stroller, BabyCenter has 26 models priced from $34.95 to $349.95. Under "dolls" however, it has only 11 choices, and they all look pretty much the same. I didn't see one of the talking variety, a favorite of my daughter.
BabyZone wasn't impressive in the content department, either. For party ideas, BabyZone fizzled, counting on the flat and few suggestions from its chat groups. And it made me work too hard to find out about atopic dermatitis. First I could find only a short definition and nearly useless reference links. A link from BabyZone's Baby Care Basics channel eventually took me to a site sponsored by the American Medical Assn., which provided material that I saved. FABULOUS FREEBIES. BabyZone's shopping, however, was a standout. It has a great selection of links to out-of-the-ordinary clothing for children as well as the more mainstream Gap and Gymboree. And BabyZone has a great, easily accessible feature that more sites should imitate: Free Stuff for Baby & Mom. Freebies include everything from magazine subscriptions to samples, coupons, pamphlets, and contests to enter. You can even arrange for a congratulatory birth note from the White House signed by President Clinton. The three sites share some flaws that are worth mentioning. At all three, if you want to know something that isn't already posted (and that's highly likely) you're probably out of luck. This is true even though all offer some variation of an "ask the expert" feature. But the experts weren't much help. Each site required registration to ask questions. At iBaby, the registration process took so long I gave up on reaching their expert. On BabyCenter, my question elicited a stock E-mail saying the site gets more questions than its experts can answer. Perhaps my question would be among those chosen to be answered on the site -- in at least two weeks.
Overall, iBaby and BabyCenter outclass BabyZone in advice and chat but the bigger two could well copy some BabyZone features. All three suffer from unwieldy size and poor organization that undermine their mission of saving parents time. In the end, I got answers to my child-rearing dilemmas -- but not online. For dermatitis advice, I turned to my pediatrician. The idea for my child's birthday party came from The Party Store. For potty training, I asked a friend. All this took an hour. In other words, no longer than just figuring out what's where on the Internet. Marks writes about business, health and technology issues from Denver _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
| |
 | |
 WEB POINTERS Read our review, then try the sites: iBaby BabyCenter BabyZone | |||||||||||||||
