Website Of The Week: Marketing

Marketing, the Haymarket weekly, launched its net site last week (http://www.marketing.haynet.com/) amid a fanfare of self-promotional editorial in print – so we have given it a whole week before assessing its content and intentions.

The site looks good, although the use of frames can cause frustrations when moving around – the more so given that some of the printed links are not working currently. It will also render it a little slow on occasions. However full marks to Marketing for immediately playing to its strengths – a daily news service (mostly marketing stories; occasional media news) and a news archive which will become more valuable as it builds, and as the search engine is refined (we got some very odd results on occasions).

News is likely to be the most frequently visited section of the site, but it was interesting to note that very few of the stories covered in the last week appeared in yesterday’s printed issue of Marketing – certainly none of the front page news had been covered on the net. So, whilst it is good to see a weekly realising the need (and opportunity) for daily news, it seems likely that the best stories will be saved for readers of the magazine. Marketing Week – which only prints news once a week on the net, the day of the magazine’s publication – is said to be introducing daily news. If it does then the competition for news-breaking scoops might just carry over to the net, to the benefit of all wired-up marketers.

Other sections include a jobs service, which is high on volume, but let down by design and searching power, and a links site, which is very limited or subjective – depending on which way you look at it; or not working at all if you want to find media owners – stick to MediaTel’s Media Links database.