Critique of Marks and Spencer's Website and Social Media Channels

Critique a business
website and social
media channels

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1- Critiquing Website of Marks and Spencer.......................................................................3
A) Page Layout and Design...................................................................................................4
B) Site Navigation..................................................................................................................5
C) Consistency of Branding...................................................................................................6
D) Recommendations on How the Website of Marks and Spencer can be Improved...........6
TASK 2- Critiquing Social Media Channels...................................................................................7
A) Consistency and Appropriateness of Message..................................................................8
B) Consistency of Branding...................................................................................................8
C) Integration of Channels.....................................................................................................9
D) Appropriateness of Channel for Particular Audience.......................................................9
E) Recommendations...........................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
The strategic business process through which a business organisation advertises and
promotes the goods, products and services it manufactures to the public, in an effort to generate
the public’s interest in the business organisation and the goods and services manufactured by
them is known as marketing (Sun and et.al., 2017). This report evaluates the digital marketing
operations of Marks and Spencer, which is a large business organisation that was founded in
1884 and operates in the global retail industry. Marks and Spencer currently conducts all of its
operations from its major headquarter in London England. As Marks and Spencer has been
operating in a highly successful manner within the retail sector for over a hundred years now,
Marks and Spencer has been able to effectively grow and expand its business operations to
lucrative international markets, allowing for the business to diversify their functions and
operations to new market segments. In total, Marks and Spencer operates around 1500 distinct
retail establishments across the world.
MAIN BODY
TASK 1- Critiquing Website of Marks and Spencer
The website of Marks and Spencer is critiqued using the Webqual framework, which
places emphasis on 12 different dimensions relating to the informational fit to task, response
time, trust, tailored information, ease of understanding, visual appeal, innovativeness, consistent
image, relative advantage, online completeness, emotional appeal, intuitive operations. The
Webqual framework is able to provide both fine and wide grained measurements for the website
of Marks and Spencer.

Figure 1: Webqual Model
A) Page Layout and Design
The official website of Marks and Spencer (https://www.marksandspencer.com/) is
critiqued to be sufficiently interactive, engaging and interesting for their customers in the retail
industry. The page layout and design of the official website of Marks and Spencer as based on a
simple framework. The pages are laid out in a simple horizontal manner, with various operations
and promotional apparels of Marks and Spencer being showcased to the consumers on the home
page of the website, making them very easy to understand for the customers based on the
Webqual model. When critiquing the design of the website, it is evaluated that the use of white
background is appropriate, as white colour soothes the customers, and allows for them to
automatically focus on the various discounts and products that are offered by Marks and
Spencer, without the customers having to spend time searching for relevant information on the
website, as the white background places all the coloured promotions and offers that Marks and
Spencer provides to the customers as the main focus of the website (Garett and et.al., 2016). The
layout of Marks and Spencer’s website if very functional, promoting the most trending offers and
discounts to the customers on the front page, in order to generate and increase their interest in
financially transacting with the business organisation, while also providing the customers with a