Mequoda Library: Larry Kerstein

Contributing Editor
Larry Kerstein

Larry Kerstein is the Vice President of Operations for Brain Saving Technologies.

Founded and led by physicians intent on improving the treatment and outcome of strokes, BST is a health services management company that is responding to a national healthcare crisis—the need for rapid, effective treatment of stroke patients and the shortage of neuro-critical care experts.

Reports by Larry Kerstein

RollCall.com Membership Website Review

Executive Summary

RollCall.com, the flagship site for Roll Call newspaper, gets it right. This publication is widely read by those people on Capitol Hill that have a need to know what is happening on the Hill. In establishing a Web presence, Roll Call could have, as so many publications before it, focused on the technology of the Web and lost that which makes it unique. The publishers of this site created a user experience that is well aligned with, and meets, visitor expectations. But does the site follow recommended online marketing practices? This Membership Website Review looks at how RollCall.com scores on the 14 website design guidelines that are key to membership website success.

This review is part of a handbook titled Membership Website Publishing.

Handbook: Membership Website Publishing
Chapter 27: RollCall.com Membership Website Review

WineEnthusiast.com Website Design Review
The Publishers of the Wine Enthusiast Magazine Have Done it Right. They Have Created a Series of Websites that Complement Each Other and Effectively Lead Visitors to Make a Buying Decision.

WineEnthusiast.com is an online catalog that offers a comprehensive selection of all things wine related. The only thing the site doesn't offer is wine. But that's just fine, as the publishers of this site depend on a motivated visitor who is enthusiastic enough about wine to want the very best in wine accessories.

This site is not for the wine novice. It's for visitors who know, appreciate and spend a fair amount of money on wine and wine-related products. This site speaks to the need to enhance and protect the investment visitors to this site have made in their wine collections. This is the destination for visitors who have read all the magazines and have had numerous discussions with their Wine Enthusiast friends, and are ready to buy those products that will make their wine collections complete.

The challenge facing the publishers of WineEnthusiast.com is to build an ecommerce website that does not practice sales prevention. There are so many ways a site like this can go wrong. It's so easy to get the copy wrong, use low quality images and most damaging, to build scenarios that lead the buyer nowhere. The challenge facing the publishers of WineEnthusiast.com is to provide visitors with a user experience that enhances, rather than diminishes, the wine collector's enthusiasm.

Upon arriving at the WineEnthusiast.com, it is immediately apparent to the visitor that this site is a well organized online catalog devoted to the Wine Enthusiast.
WineEnthusiast.com is an excellent example of an online catalog.
The publishers of this website should consider providing the passionate visitors to this site with an opportunity to express their passions with every visit they make.
This site presents a nice combination of utility, supporting the commerce elements of the site, and accessibility of design, ensuring ease of access and readability for published content.
Visitors to this website will be rewarded with a successful online experience as they seek to purchase from a collection of products that reflects those visitors' desire for quality and value.

GMarketing.com Website Design Review
GMarketing.com Does a Great Job of Educating Visitors and Providing Practical Applications of the Guerrilla Marketing Concept, a Concept That Can be Very Successfully Applied by Most, if not all, Businesses

What exactly is guerrilla marketing? Well, Jay Conrad Levinson, father of guerrilla marketing, describes it thusly:

"I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always—achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money."

Mr. Levinson has been busy practicing, developing and evangelizing guerrilla marketing since 1984, with great success. Many startups and small companies use Mr. Levinson's techniques to produce tangible results with minimal cost. However, established companies such as Smirnoff and Vodafone have also integrated guerrilla techniques into their marketing mix. The concept of guerrilla marketing has been especially well received by Internet companies, which typically operate on limited marketing budgets, and has given rise to other marketing techniques such as viral marketing and search marketing. Guerrilla marketing is characterized by extreme statements that are intended to grab the audience. For example, "'Guerrilla Marketing for the New Millennium' is quite literally a blueprint for business immortality. You've got to have it!"

You may not agree with or even believe a statement such as the one above. But you will notice and remember such a statement. Note also that the guerrilla marketing concept has given rise to a new category of consulting. Various independent practitioners have hung out their guerrilla marketing shingles. Another measure of acceptance is the fact that many traditional marketing companies have added guerrilla marketing practices.

All this being said, Mr. Levinson continues to expand his guerrilla marketing empire, most recently partnering with Michael McLaughlin to create guerrilla marketing for consultants. GMarketing.com is one of the primary vehicles supporting the expansion of Levinson's guerrilla marketing. This site is your entry into the world of guerrilla marketing, but be forewarned, there is a price to enter!

The main objective of the site is to collect leads, and in so doing, create customers for the various products and services offered on this site.
GMarketing.com offers visitors the opportunity to sign up for email subscriptions, newsletter subscriptions and subscriptions for premium content by purchasing membership in the Guerrilla Marketing Association.
Unfortunately, the GMarketing.com website has overlooked an important and powerful marketing technique. There are no opportunities for visitors to engage in dialog with other visitors.
GMarketing.com emphasizes simplicity of design and content. There is little on the site, including navigation and content, that isn't presented in a simple, clear and understandable fashion.
GMarketing.com does a very good job of educating visitors and providing practical applications of guerrilla marketing concepts.

Economist.com Website Design Review
Publishers of The Economist Consider Economist.com a Strategic Corporate Asset and Offer Visitors a Highly Usable and Accessible Website Design, Enabling Users to Achieve Their Objectives Quickly and Efficiently

The Economist is the premier weekly news and international affairs publication with an average circulation of over one million copies a week. The Economist began publishing in 1843. According to its contents page, its goal is to "take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." Subjects covered include international news, economics, politics, business, finance, science and technology and the arts.

The publication is targeted at the high-end "prestige" segment of the market and counts among its audience influential business and government decision-makers. It takes a strongly argued editorial stance on many issues, especially support for fiscal conservatism. The Economist strongly supports the free market, while also supporting more liberal issues like gun control and gay marriage. As one of the most respected publications in the world, The Economist attributes its success to "…the outstanding reputation it has for high-quality, relevant analysis." It is the rather formidable task of bringing this outstanding reputation to the Web that The Economist has taken on in its website, Economist.com.

The Economist.com website design achieves simplicity in that its mission is clear and focused.
The publishers of this site take extensive advantage of the interactive characteristics to ensure that visitors have a varied and successful site experience.
The Economist.com is packed with content, and there are several opportunities for the user to become confused about navigating the site.
The professionalism of design is achieved largely through the judicious use of color, the use of complementary colors and the liberal use of white space.
Economist.com has hit all the right notes in creating an online venue that is successful both for advertisers and visitors.

AmericasTestKitchen.com Website Design Review
America's Test Kitchen Website, a Network Hub Positioned to Extend Visitors from the Television to the Web to the Printed Word, Demonstrates Extraordinary Website Architecture in Satisfying Users' Need for Added Value and Publisher's Desire for Additional Revenue

Few websites represent successful attempts to integrate broadcast with broadband media. This is not so much because it is impossible to achieve this level of integration as because so few organizations have tried the cross-media model. America's Test Kitchen, and its sister websites, represent just such an attempt. This site is positioned to provide visitors with a seamless experience extending from the television to the Web to the printed word. While clearly not rocket science, such integration can prove challenging, if only because it is attempted so seldom. The additional complexity of a set of integrated websites whose purpose is to enhance and extend the online marketing channel makes for a challenge worthy of America's Test Kitchen.

When visitors come to this site, they are expecting to find the content referenced on the America’s Test Kitchen television show. At the same time, the publishers of the site would like every visitor to become a registered visitor—the website design supports both of these objectives.
The site is all about capturing visitor email addresses and establishing relationships with those visitors—once this connection is established, AmericasTestKitchen.com directs visitors to the various sites in the network, presenting various offers and premiums from throughout the network.
The website design is scrupulous about providing visitors with continuity in navigation. Each page heading has the same content providing visitors with consistent navigation from page to page.
While AmericasTestKitchen.com is packed with content, the user is never confused about navigating the site. All links are text links. In addition, the links presented on this site are presented in a wholly consistent fashion.
AmericasTestKitchen.com does an excellent job of reinforcing brand by providing visitors with an easy to use, intuitive website. The site provides an excellent landing point for those directed to the site by its companion television show

RollCall.com Website Design Review
Roll Call Website Remains True to its Founding Principles By Using Simple, Effective Website Design, Yet Misses the Boat on a Few Small Details

This website design review proves that RollCall.com, the flagship site for Roll Call newspaper, gets it right. This publication is widely read by those people on Capitol Hill that have a need to know what is happening on the Hill. Roll Call has a well-established reputation as the source for inside information on politics and government in Washington. In establishing a Web presence, Roll Call could have, as so many publications before it, focused on the technology of the Web and lost that which makes it unique. Spending some time with this site doing this website design review provides convincing evidence that Roll Call has remained true to its founding principles.

The publishers of this site have created a user experience that is well aligned with, and meets, visitor expectations
This site does a very good job of following recommended online marketing precepts—visitors are not required to scroll to see important content or equally important marketing messages
The publishers of Roll Call have done an excellent job transferring the quality and value of the print edition to the Web—the site is to-the-point, easy to use and full of value
Roll Call subscribers are offered a number of email notifications; a better strategy would have been to offer non-subscribers the same options as a way to build relationships
Embedded linking would enhance the usability of this site, and would facilitate the ability of visitors to create their own paths

The Motley Fool Website Design Review
The Motley Fool Website Provides Relevant and Engaging Content in a Readily Accessible Fashion, Combining Effective Use of Content Webification, Relationship and Community Building and Proper Navigation

Tom and David Gardner have made a career of being foolish, and foolishly brilliant. They have created a brand that is well recognized within the investment community and without. They created this brand by respecting their audience and by offering real value to those tens of thousands of viewers, listeners and readers. Their website, Fool.com, extends this ethos by providing visitors with a gratifying experience from which they derive real value.

The Motley Fool demonstrates respect for visitors by doing the simple things well. The design of the site is intuitive. The content is relevant and the navigation is consistently usable. The Motley Fool website successfully brings the brand that Tom and David Gardner created to the web. To the experienced investor, this site is a treasure trove, but to the novice investor, or to experienced investors new to the site, figuring out where to focus attention can be a challenge. This site does an excellent job of leveraging the data process and interactive capabilities of the web.

The Motley Fool site is really all about community, a community of investors that have a belief in David and Tom Gardner as luminaries in the investment community. The Motley Fool website presents a clear and consistent navigation scheme that is anchored by the global navigation menu at the top of the page—this menu is persistent, remaining unchanged from page to page. The Motley Fools don’t pretend to be the smartest guys in the room, but instead offer a common sense perspective with humor and humility—the website conveys this same demeanor, making a substantive contribution to the Motley Fool franchise.

ElementKJournals.com Website Design Review
When you’re preparing a Powerpoint presentation for that important sales meeting, and you just can’t figure how to get your bullets to line up just so, wouldn’t it be great to have the answer at your fingertips? Well, that’s what the Element K Journals website wants to do for you. Whether you are a business professional, a design maven or a technology geek, this site has the answers you seek.

Element K Journals offers a variety of information products that provide the most current, up-to-date information about the applications or technologies that most people need to know about. The big question, however, is whether this information is credible and of value. Can Element K Journals convince visitors to the website that its publications and its authors can come up with the goods?

In this website design review, Larry Kerstein determines that the site does well in most aspects of successful website design, although there are a few glaring problems. With a final score of B, it's clear the site has great value, however, it'd be better if the site would make this value more immediately obvious to site visitors. Throughout the review, Kerstein provides useful tips for anyone selling information products online.

Lawyers.com Website Design Review
The one institution that most of us would rather not come in contact with is the legal system. But when the need arises, it is immediate. The lawyers.com website offers a solution to the problem of finding an attorney and getting smart about your particular legal problems.

Not unlike WebMD in the healthcare field, lawyers.com offers direction, guidance and the ability to contact a practitioner when faced with the complex problem of dealing with the legal system. That’s a lofty objective, and it would be easy for a site like lawyers.com to miss the mark as a premier online legal resource. In the end, it’s all about credibility, confidence and the quality of a user's experience.

In this website design review, Larry Kerstein looks at laywers.com through the eyes of Mequoda's 14 website design guidelines and determines that although it only scored a B, it does an excellent job of meeting its objective. The site is well architected, with extensive navigation that is clear, intuitive and simple. With a few basic improvements, this site will become an excellent example of community building and good website design.

Hello Guest! | Log in

Tell Me about the Library

Increase text size: A A A