Our wild web woman thinking caps are off to the Boston Globe today as a positive role model!

They sent an email out to their loyal readers announcing the roll out of a new suite of tools that will make interacting with Boston.com content and community easier and more rewarding. you had us at easy!

Boston.com Gets a Positive Web Marketing Role Model A-ok!

Boston.com gets a Web Marketing Therapy positive role model for their understanding that web marketing work is never done and for their comittment to making their website a webSOLUTION.  They also win web marketing therapy kudos for being proactive communicators.  They sent an email out to readers to give them advance notice since some of the upgrades may affect Boston.com user experience.  The email was brilliant – short, sweet and bulleted (remember, web surfres SCAN they don’t read, bullets rock!) and in the email, they highlighted their new site site features…features powered with personalization!! (a total web marketing best practice!)

Here’s the skinny on the new Boston.com:

1. Personal profile pages with web experience, all users want to see is “what’s in it for me?”
They automatically create a personal profile page for everyone who posts to a forum or comments on an article.  If you have posted to a forum in the past, you also get a profile page.

Other features include:

* A personal avatar making experience more personal and fun
* The ability to add links to friends making the site sticky and an interactive rolodex…smart!
* Controls that let you choose what appears on your profile empowering, good for control freaks

2. Improved comments on articles like:

* The ability to recommend comments with one click easy = happy readers
* Sorting tools that allow you to determine the order in which the comments appear geeky cool
* Clickable screen names

3. Improved, faster forums there is a need for speed! with features like:

* Ignore this user, which removes from view the comments of posters who annoy you
* Unread comments. You’ll see a gold star next to any discussion that has new comments since the last time you visited. Clicking the star will bring you to the point in the discussion where you left
* Much better search they probably got comments and feedback asking for this!  way to deliver!
* Clickable screen names, which link to profile pages

The email gave tips on when features would be hitting to respect and communicate with their readers and they also openly invited email recipients to visit the FAQ page or offer to answer questions on feedback@boston.com.

Thank you Boston.com for caring about your web readers and for employing empowering web marketing best practices.  Your comittment to healthy web marketing makes you a wealthy organization in our book!

P.S.  Thank you to Eldon Edwards for sending us GREAT emails with killer examples!  Next time I see you, I am giving you a WMT “Thinking Cap” as a token of my appreciation

Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:

• Postive Role Model – Misty Gibbs of My Inspiration Lounge
• Featured WMT Postive Role Model: Niels Johnson-Lameijer (Part Two)
• Another Positive Role Model Holiday Card – www.mafg.com
• Positive Web Marketing Role Model – Giving Tree Jewelry

Categories: Positive Role Models, Web Marketing Best Practices

Tags: boston globe, boston.com, killer websites, personalization, Positive Role Models, positve role models, website management

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