Strategic Ideas

I have been working on a website, “The Doha Blues,” a book to be released on November 5, 2009. During the next few posts I will be documenting the development of a website for his book and the evolution of the online marketing plan. The site is designed to be maintained by the site owner after the initial book launch. Therefore it is being designed using GoDaddy.com’s WebSite Tonight. I will be reporting the entire experience in this blog for the next month or so and will share lessons learned along the way as well as highlighting the pros and cons of WebSite Tonight for anyone looking to create their own site using this program. (The StrategicIdeas.com site by the way is a WordPress blog hosted by GoDaddy.com.)

There are limitations with WebSite Tonight, as on all such WYSIWYG web creation programs. While the pre-arranged templates are great for non-designers (although it helps if you have some background in web design to get the most out of these programs,) there are some limitations that are frustrating. The biggest issue which I’m still working through is the lack of a good internal search function. I’m still evaluating various internal site searches to find one that works well for this site and with WebSite Tonight. Another limitation is the quirky way in which space is created in the tables. Even cleanup of the generated HTML code does not seem to allow the user to eliminate unwanted spaces. (For example see the space between the Search box and the ordering icons. Ideally there would be a way to have the Search box to the right and on the same row as the Social Media icons, but the program does not appear to allow the user to do this.

This image above is the second version of the home page and incorporates ordering information on the top page. In addition, links have been added to social media sites that are heavily used by the target market: academics, policy makers and people interested in following and understanding the World Trade Organization.

If you are interested in how to build a good book web site then I highly recommend reading  ”What to include on author websites” posted on The Book Publicity Blog August 9, 2009.  (Another tip: read the companion article, “What not to include on author websites.”) I learned about both of these articles from the publisher of The Doha Blues and the advice is on target for any website.

Next article: decisions about which social media sites to target.