The Best Mall Website?

Malls, mixed-use developments, shopping centers - call them what you will, they dot the landscape of America.

Many of the larger developments have websites. For the most part, they’re pretty awful. So, when we were asked to produce a new website for North Hills, a mixed-use development in Raleigh, NC, our goal was to help bring the category into a Web 2.0 world.

Two months after the launch, we have every reason to feel we’ve achieved. Stats are great, everything works, and best of all, a continuing content stream is beginning to bloom. It’s interesting stuff, too - stories, bios, pictures and video.

So here’s a checklist of things we think a contemporary mall or mixed-use website needs.

The Basics

1. A page for each merchant
2. A picture for each merchant
3. Descriptive text for each merchant (more than just a phone number and an outside link)

It is surprising how few big developments have reached this level of information. See our collection of links for malls and mixed-use developments on Delicious (and please feel free to add links to other sites in the category).

The Finer Points

1. Interactive Map
2. Continuing Content Stream
3. Ad Platform

(1) The interactive map is a challenging bit of engineering and UI. We’ll write more about it soon. (2) In most cases, developing a rich content stream requires cultural change for clients. Training and continued support are mandatory to advance evolutionary adoption of web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitter. (3) Big developments like North Hills have the potential to draw big traffic. Why settle for pennies on the dollar when you could have it all with your own ad platform? Tune in again for a discussion about implementing your own ad server.

Best Practices

To boost the performance of a site in this category as measured by key stats like Time On Site and Page Views, here are a few best practices we can recommend:

1. Minimize outside links
2. Run outside content in an iframe within your site
3. Drive traffic to niches with CPC advertising
4. Pay attention to what Analytics tells you about your audience

The Last, Most Important Point

Like all other advertising and marketing ventures, success is rooted in a good agency-client relationship. We are deeply grateful to Kane Realty Corporation for their vision and their patience throughout this project.

Special thanks to:

• Anna Smith
• Mike Smith
• Bonner Gaylord
• Jon Masterson
• Katherine Knott
• Angela Slater
• Paul Newcomer
• Walt Stewart
• North Hills Security

For Goodtree & Company:

• George Gumpert, master programmer
• David Holt, design
• John Dixon, flash
• Leslie Huffman, merchant database and blogging diva
• Hal Goodtree, precious little

Thanks also to Allen Weiss, Michael Kimsal, Lindsey Chester, Paul Harnett, Dorothea Bitler, Jill Harris, Fiquet, Kevin and Stacey Jennings, Wick Morgan and Jason Peck. And thanks to Jake St. Peter and Mike McTaggart for their generous time.

Please contact us for more information about mall, shopping center and mixed-use development websites.