HI Pen,
I know we have spoken about this before, but you did ask!
I'm not a fan of virtual high streets. Shopping malls don't have them, brands don't have them, it's not how people use the internet to find information. Our high street, visually, isn't an asset. It frightened Waitrose away (so I'm informed) so I'd be more inclined to use pictures of the shop owners or things they sell instead of pictures of the shop fronts and signage. It will also stop it becoming out of date quickly and advertising it's shabbyness. Leave that to Google streetview!
The
http://thecrouchendproject.co.uk/ is a really good town centre website. They have a loyalty card, although they call it a membership card. When it was a loyalty card it didn't do very well. The plan is to make it work in other areas too so the Muswell Hill card will work in crouch end and vice versa. So it's more like the Nectar card than a Tesco Club card. Their card has more holders than members of the Sydenham Soceity in a smaller area. I don't know how Sydenham Smiles works as yet. It's worth speaking to Clare Richmond from
http://www.speakto.co.uk/ about what they have learned from their site and doing loyalty cards.
On the home page, I think it's worth copying what the likes of Westfield, John Lewis etc do. We did that with the sires for Harrow Town Centre and North Harrow so all the recent events are big on the front page and you don't have to click through menus to find anything. As soon as people have to start clicking through menus traffic dramatically falls away.
http://uk.westfield.com/london/This is the one we designed with Town Talk for North Harrow (along with the branding):
http://www.northharrow.towntalk.co.uk/Here is the one we designed with Town Talk for Harrow Town Centre (we also designed the logo):
http://www.harrow.towntalk.co.uk/The way the Crouch End Project design their ads in the directory is good too. They limit what people can say, they lead with an image of their logo or an offer or something they sell rather than an image of their shop which feels more modern and bespoke. Businesses get a free small listing then can upgrade to a bigger more comprehensive listing (a lesson learned from how supermarkets get people to 'upgrade' from standard to Finest).
On the front page they have Twitter listings which helps with SEO and all events are accessed by the colour coded 'whats on' section which is brilliantly designed, easy to use and looks great.
It's a little confusing, especially in a Google search that it's called Sydenham Town Centre when the main site visited for Sydenham is Sydenham Town and there is also a Sydenham Town Talk site. I'm not sure how we get around that one.
I think the Sydenham Town Centre website is a great start but there is much we can do to improve things.
