books.biz

After our discussion of what people want when they go to a publisher’s website, I relayed the information back to my co-manager of External Promotions, or, as it is sometimes called, the events group. We immediately contacted digital in order to find out what we needed to do to get a calendar of events of the Ooligan page.

Simon and Schuster must have been listening in on our class discussion as well, because they have just launched a brand new site specifically geared towards those in the publishing business. After much thought and a whole lot of blogging, the online marketing class concluded that there really is no good explanation for why all the big publishers market their websites to the book buying public. So, it is news worthy (thanks PW) when one of the big boys decides to launch a site that might actually be helpful to some of the people who actually do business with the company. The site (http://www.simonandschuster.biz/) is the “source of corporate information and B-to-B resources for Booksellers, Media, Authors, Partners, Vendors, and more…” Hazzah

The site is a bit overly complicated, however, and the seemingly easy layout proves to be more convoluted than it first appears. To begin with, there is a main box in the center of the page displaying a succession of snippets about the features of the site. “Great,” I thought, until I tried to read the copy and found that it changes about ten seconds too early each time. “Oh well, I’ll just click the handy links that correspond.” Foiled again. The flashing, link-like red arrows are nothing but dead ends. This is a perfect example of what not to do when designing a website. In class we talked about the fact that there is a certain set of expectations that we must abide by when designing a good website. I think perhaps the S&S team missed that class.

But when it comes right down to it, this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. Once they work out the kinks, Simon and Schuster could go down in history as the first big publisher to realize what the internet is for.