Web women

The latest wave of awardwinning sites are being managed from computers on kitchen tables by people who aren't internet experts, proving how easy it is to make your mark online.

The BabyCentre site for mothers and mothers-to-be won two awards at the International Visual Communications Association (IVCA) 2002 Biz-Net Awards.

It was produced for healthcare company Johnson & Johnson by Content Consultants, which was co-founded by Anna McGrail, from Hove, and Daphne Metland, from Norwich.

The site was launched in March 2000 and now boasts more than 150,000 users, a staggering 4.3 million page views a month and community bulletin boards that receive more than 1,000 postings a day.

It also contains a library of 2,200 articles written by experts.

The judges described it as comprehensive, engaging and easy to navigate. The site was awarded the overall prize for its "compelling content, high degree of personalisation and sense of community".

The award is presented to the most outstanding new development, concept or programme, selected from the category winners.

Although the site "lives" in the United States, Ms McGrail and her business partner manage its day-to-day running -

updating information, commissioning new content and reading postings - from their homes.

Ms McGrail, 43, said: "You'd laugh if you saw my computer.

It's sitting in the back room, which is also our dining room."

Although she shared the computer with her two children, Ben, 14, and Christiane, 11, there weren't too many arguments over who got to use it.

Ms McGrail has worked as an editor and writer for more than ten years. She is a former managing director of Pavilion Publishing and has also written several books, including the award-winning You and Your New Baby and Infertility: The Last Secret.

In 2000, she co-wrote a play for the Brighton Festival, Fuzzy Logic, on the internet with Nottingham-

based Adrian Reynolds. However, she said learning how to maintain the BabyCentre site represented a whole new challenge.

She said: "I love the web. I think it's fantastic because when articles are published online you get instant feedback. You can constantly fine tune what you're writing.

"But it was a huge learning curve understanding how to use the site's content management system to update things."

The main thing for her was the knowledge a team of experts in California were always on hand to help out.

She said: "I personally would find it extremely hard if I thought it was just me and Daphne when things go wrong.

"It's always good to have a support system in place."

Not everyone has a team of experts on hand or wishes to make running a site their fulltime occupation.

June Jackson, 58, has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to her site.

She runs a site featuring the pearls of wisdom for which grandmothers are famous, from how to start up a plot on an allotment to making lump-free gravy.

She manages Hints and Things from her home in Pease Pottage. She had thought about setting up a business information service but was worried about whether she had the time or motivation.

She said: "I was also worried about spending money on something no one would be interested in.

"I've always enjoyed searching out information and learning about new things. When my children were small, if I didn't know the answer to one of their questions I would make sure I found out."

The germ for the site was planted many years ago when Mrs Jackson's daughter Sally, having just left home, phoned her to ask what "simmer"

meant.

She said: "Sally's a pharmacist so I thought if she didn't know perhaps other people wouldn't.

"The site is my way of trying to share all those little pearls of wisdom that used to be passed from generation to generation."

Her son Carl, who designed the site based on Mrs Jackson's plans, came up with the idea of using a virtual "house" to navigate.

She said her lack of technical understanding might have helped create something original.

Many web designers had a set way of doing things but because she didn't know what she could and couldn't do, her site had come out a bit different.

She then made sure there was enough information for each of the 14 rooms, collecting three pages of information per room, covering everything from gardening and woodwork to cookery and computers.

It was launched in June 2000, and, two weeks later, it was picked as Web Site Of The Day by online magazine Emazing.

Mrs Jackson was inundated with ideas and responses.

She said: "I was extremely lucky but the downside was I received 400 emails that all had to be answered in a weekend.

Before that, I had received six or seven questions a day.

"I thought people would send me their hints and tips but didn't think they would ask me.

"It's just a hobby and I would have been pleased with 100 hits a day but in December, I was getting about 6,000 hits a day and about 200,000 in total."

Apart from occasional technical help from her son, Mrs Jackson handles everything herself, including researching and answering questions, updating pages and arranging links.

She had planned to add to the site as she answered questions but the volume made this impossible.

Now she is setting up a second site, Ask June.

She said: "The second site is essential to hold this knowledge I've been accumulating."

She used the internet to find the name of the editor of the Washington Post and emailed him.

She said: "I played on the plump, grey-haired wrinkly England image, which I think they love, and they featured it."

She has appeared on This Morning and been featured in The Daily Telegraph, the WH Smith Students Guide and numerous other publications.

Although she works full-time as an office manager, she spends between 20 and 25 hours a week maintaining the site and answering questions.

She said: "I'm a true believer in personal contact, which there seems to be very little of these days.

"People just want to someone to listen and try and help."

The most important thing was to run a site which was interesting not because it made money.

She said: "Many people won't get involved if they can't see money at the end of the line. But, if you do it for the right reasons, you will stick at it and should eventually be rewarded.

"If I can do it, anyone can."

www.babycentre.co.uk
www.hintsandthings.co.uk
www.askjune.co.uk