Today, I have been looking at ways to improve Inspired Quill’s website. As I briefly discussed in my last post, the internet is an immensely powerful tool and while that tool can be put to good personal use, it is essential that businesses also keep up; promoting themselves across the World Wide Web in order to reach as many people as possible. For this reason, it is essential that a company’s website offers a wealth of information, presented in an easy to use format.
To start with, I had a good look at the website that IQ currently has. I wanted to see what the user experience was like for myself, and what better way to do this than put myself in the position of a visitor to the site? On the whole, it is very comprehensive. I found a couple of broken links that will need to be fixed, but the menus are simple to navigate, while information about the company and in particular, on the submission process, was easy to locate. The managing director is in the process of setting up a community area, but this is not yet present on the website. When it is up and running, it will provide a forum for those who read, as well as those who write, to discuss shared interests in an informal atmosphere. Along the same lines, I have suggested a resource centre, where IQ’s writers can post articles to help others with the process of getting published themselves. I also think a more detailed outline of the publishing process itself would be beneficial, to give visitors to the site an idea of what a manuscript goes through before we see it on the shelves.
I then had a look around at what similar independent publishing houses were offering, to see how our website could be improved. As far as visual design is concerned, I actually found IQ’s site to be far superior to a number of others that I visited. On the other hand, the feature that is clearly lacking currently is our catalogue. This is the part of the site where readers are invited to search for titles published by us that they may be interested in, and then subsequently publish them. As it stands, for a customer to publish a title, they are directed to an external provider who is then presumably paid a percentage for hosting our stock. Other companies, I found, cut out this middle man, and ran a script to allow customers to buy directly from them. In the future, I would like IQ to also be able to provide this service, and the MD has confirmed that this has been on the cards for a while.
I also feel that our catalogue could stand to be organised a little better. Rather than titles being categorised by author and by genre, as they are, these could be consolidated so that, in line with other publisher’s websites, they are organised by genre only. Then, on the page that currently provides information about IQ’s author’s, links to each person’s published works can be provided.
All in all, I’ve come to realise just how important a company’s website is, particularly in the case of a small company such as Inspired Quill. Rather than being a secondary tool, for many, creating a website has become the first step in establishing a brand and so ensuring we keep up with the competition is absolutely crucial.
The Slush Pile 