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August 12, 2007

Martha’s spring cleaning

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the magazine and merchandising company founded by you-know-who, has just revamped its web site. It’s worth visiting for several reasons:

The design is clean, colorful and lively. Martha’s stuff has always been distinctively designed, and this is no exception.

Take Martha’s guided tour; it’s simply terrific. What a friendly, fun way to introduce visitors to the features and benefits of a web site!

The site has been redesigned not just to spruce it up, but for critical business reasons. As an April 10 MarketWatch article explains, the new web site represents a “bid to capture more online revenue.

“The new site seeks to capitalize on Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s well-known brands to increase online visitors and generate more advertising and other revenue from the Internet,” the article states. “The strategy is a key component of the company’s ambitious goal to lessen reliance on its magazines and generate a third of its earnings from the Internet.”

I continue to advise clients to look closely at Internet sites in order to gain inspiration (and steal ideas) for your intranet site. It’s important because Internet sites like Martha’s have so much at stake—they’re not just hoping that people will visit, their business depends on it. So they offer a free demonstration of techniques that attract visitors, and encourage them to stay, browse, interact and buy.

As Martha might say, “That’s a good thing.”

Posted by Alison Davis at August 12, 2007 05:14 PM