The Fourth Wheel, Issue 85

The best and worst watch brand websites

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter whose founder is feeling every one of his 37 years on this planet. I know that’s not old, and if 37 is in your rear view mirror, you’ll be rolling your eyes, but LVMH just put a 29-year old in charge of three watch brands so allow me a little world-weariness. As my father is not in fact a billionaire but instead a retired expert in historic buildings, I could still sleep at night, but then came France trolling me with its 34-year old Prime Minister. Ah well. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And at least my birth-year watches are still vaguely affordable…

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That’s right: I’m offering a 30 per cent discount on paid subs this month. You’ve seen it before, but just to remind you of the sales pitch:

No ads. No-one rifling through your data. No outside influence over what I write. A weekly newsletter that majors on expert analysis, journalistic investigation, honest opinion and really bad puns³. If you want to have the conversation about whether content should cost money, I am here in the comments, but for the price of a pint and a packet of crisps⁴ you get to read something you won’t read anywhere else. Plus you’ll get early access and preferential treatment when I launch other ideas, and they are coming this year, I promise you that.

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

2023 In Review
What To Expect In 2024
A Zoom Call With Jean-Claude Biver, and Ten Ways To Improve The GPHG
The Watch I Wore Most In 2023
The Twelve Most Significant Watches In The World

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What makes a good watch brand website? A Blog To Watch published a short editorial on the subject last week, and while the subject is something of a hardy perennial for watch editors searching keenly for something, anything, to fill the void in the news-shy early weeks of the year, there but for the grace of God go I, and besides it’s not a subject I’ve tackled before on TFW.

We have to remember that watch brands don’t make websites for journalists. Our browsing is what you might call atypical behaviour. But let’s assume that being able to find details of the watches a brand makes is of some use to potential customers too, that they too will tire of labyrinthine site construction and browser-knobbling plugins, and that they are as sensitive to bullshit as we are.

For a long time watch brands’ attitudes to the internet lagged far behind those of everyday people, and their websites reflected that. Then they got excited about what their websites could be and do, and almost overnight you saw brands pivot to ludicrously glam homepages, loaded with animations and videos and interactive elements. A particular favourite was the pre-homepage landing page, a sort of digital velvet curtain through which you should walk before reaching the inner sanctum that was the actual site. I’m pleased to say this has all but died out, recognised for the waste of time and barrier to satisfaction that it was. I suspect in the twenty-teens a lot of digital agencies picked up substantial fees for developing all-singing, all-dancing sites for luxury brands, only to see the same site overhauled a year or two later. (For sure, keep moving forward, but don’t re-make the world every time). The licensing fees on library music alone – anything with surging, swelling string sections and a vague ticking sound in the background – must have been huge.

On the other hand, you have the brands whose operations or priorities just don’t really extend to having a well-tended website. Mostly, we’re talking about the small, usually high-end independent watchmakers for whom word of mouth is more important than SEO or social media. Maddeningly for journalists, often these brands’ websites won’t show new products until long after they’re announced, and sometimes never. But these are dying out - even the most reclusive Swiss watchmaker, working out of a hillside workshop that only gets post three times a week and is cut off by snow in the winter… even he has a passable website these days. So rather than spend my time laying into watch companies for their sluggish uptake of all things internet-based, I thought I’d start on a positive note and pick out some of the brand websites that I think set a good example.

First stop: Patek Philippe. Controversial, you may think. Certainly, patek.com is unlikely to win any awards for creative web design. Good, says I. Stop trying so damn hard, watch brands. The Patek Philippe website isn’t drab per se – there’s a massive video on the Aquanaut Luce Minute Repeater on the homepage – but it is fundamentally practical. Everything’s easy to find. There’s information on calibres and other savoir faire, should you wish, but most of all I love the ease with which you can see which models launched this year¹. I also enjoy the little tab that you click to reveal the price, like a dainty lifting of a long skirt to reveal a flash of ankle.²

Helpfully simple or far too plain for a top watch brand? You decide

Next on my good list is Nomos Glashutte. Talk about websites that reflect the brand, and the product, to a tee. I love this website: it’s clean, it’s clear, it’s easy to navigate, and every watch is presented with all the information I need. Best of all, the tone of voice is clearly present throughout but it’s never allowed to overwhelm or obscure the information you came there to find. Ten out of ten.

It’s not all about simple clarity, though - as a journalist, that’s what the press site should be for³. A little showmanship is a must, if you’re to convince me your brand is at all sexy, and the occasional gimmick is appreciated. TAG Heuer’s website might be a bit in-your-face at times but I’ve always enjoyed the feature that animates every watch with the correct time. I assume whichever department or outside agency creates the rendered images has to also generate the assets to load into some kind of animation plugin – but it’s complex. Quartz watches are shown to tick, while automatics advance smoothly; chronographs demonstrate their start-stop-reset cycle too. I admire the attention to detail.