Some of Alan's views on this digital marketing malarkey ... there's more on: AlanCharlesworth.com

Thursday, March 28, 2013

celebrity cook's website leaves a bitter taste

OK, so tell me I don't keep up with TV events [I don't] but on the BBC's breakfast show there was a celebrity chef called Gizzi Erskine who I had never seen before. Now, I don't mind admitting I was taken by how attractive she is and so I did what is now the norm – I Googled her [hey, I'm a man :-)]. Top of the SERP was GizziErskine.com – so I switched from admirer to website analyst, and I wasn't as impressed with the website as I was with the person.

 The first thing I noticed was that the textual content switched to and from the first and third person ['I like …' / 'Gizzi is …'] – I prefer the more personal first person, but choose one and stick with it.

Then I saw the 'on TV' section, expecting to be able to see her appearance on the BBC that I had seen a couple of hours earlier? But no, the two links took me to the ITV's This Morning home page. The other 'on TV' took me to a page on rachaelray.com/blogs which said: 'No Posts. Not Found. Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.' Hmmm.

On then to Gizzi's blog – but the last entry was November last year. A quick look at the blog's archive suggests that it was started with the best of intentions, but then became little more than a series of recipes – which I would guess are in Gizzi's book or elsewhere on the website. Perhaps a prime example of what I always say about blogs being time consuming.

So I then checked the 'page info' for the latest page update – and found that it was '28 March 2013 09:45:53' – which was the time I arrived on the site. Coincidence, or some software running on the site which caused it to record an 'update' every time someone arrived at the site? [Google likes websites that are frequently updated].

I am also concerned at the '© Random House Group Ltd' at the bottom of the page. I will assume Gizzi will have signed a similar contract with her book publishers to the ones I sign with mine. Those state that the contents of the book[s] are copyright to me. I would expect similar with the associated website.

So there you go – I could use this website as case study in 'what could have been', Gizzi has all the attributes to have a 'must visit' web presence, but she hasn't. I wonder whose fault that is?

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