BN.com Goes 2.0: A Q&A with CEO Marie Toulantis on this week’s launch of a revamped Barnes & Noble Web site
Barnes & Noble.com (BN.com) launched a newly designed Web site this week, with a host of new features and an emphasis on interactive content and community. The site has been in the works for approximately six months, according to BN.com CEO Marie Toulantis.
The world’s largest bookseller partnered with New York-based agency R/GA to bring the project to life. After speaking with a number of potential agencies, “We selected R/GA [because] we felt they had the best experience in the interactive field, and they had done some really great work [in the past],” says Toulantis. “We thought they had a lot of great ideas, and the chemistry was right for us.”
Toulantis also notes that this major redesign is only just the beginning. “We’ll have a lot more things that we’re working on that we’ll launch gradually in the next 12 to 18 months,” she says.
Toulantis spoke with Book Business Extra about BN.com’s new look and enhanced features, and how the redesign benefits both customers and publishers.
Extra: What initiated the redesign?
Marie Toulantis: … We really wanted to incorporate some more elements of content and community, and make it a little more interactive, a little more fun, a little bit more engaging. So we decide to use some newer technologies, some new Web 2.0 things like AJAX and Flash, to present the books in a more interesting light. Also, … [we wanted] to really highlight the media features that we’ve had, but we haven’t had them nicely merchandised and displayed and easily findable. … So again, making the site more interactive, more engaging, more community, more interaction with authors through various interviews and podcasts and so forth, and adding a social networking aspect in the form of online book clubs where readers and writers can connect directly.
Extra: The redesign was obviously influenced by a lot of newer technology. Was it also influenced by input from customers, users, publishers, etc.?
Toulantis: We had some of the features out there in a test mode, like the book club and the author interviews, and we saw they were getting a lot of traffic and a lot of comments about them. So we thought, this obviously means that this is something our customers are liking, so how can we make it even better?
… We have thousands of author events in our stores each year, so why not be able to webcast some of those? By webcasting them, people can watch them live on the Web site. Maybe they’re not in the city [where] we’re having [the event], but if you’re in Peoria, why not be able to tune in and see what’s going on at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, which has this great event going on? So we’re doing live webcasts and archiving those.
We’re also going on location. You’ll see we have [for example] a great interview with Tony Bennett from his studio in Manhattan. It’s really neat to have an interview with Tony Bennett in his surroundings and [to] bring that to our customers where they can hear from him directly … about his love of art and music and, of course, he has a new book out.
Extra: What are some of the other new features on the site?
Toulantis: We’re also doing podcasts, a lot of interviews, and these are things people can download right from the Web site and listen to right there. We also syndicate that on iTunes, so you can go to iTunes and get it. It was really a way to put it all together for our customers and enable them to get a little closer to the content.
Another feature we launched was the “See Inside” the book feature––the ability to basically open up the book and look at it. Right now, we have tens of thousands of books, but we’ll have more and more as we keep adding to the service.
Another feature we added [is] the book clubs. We actually started that late last year, in October, and we’ve been adding and adding to it––different clubs, different authors, different genres, author-led, moderator-led––and having a lot of fun with that and getting a terrific response from our customers. They can interact directly with the authors and with each other, and it’s done very well.
Extra: How will these new features benefits publishers?
Toulantis: I think certainly highlighting their books with the “See Inside” feature and the very unique way that we’re doing that … generates more interest in those books. Secondly, just having customers that are more engaged with your products; that always, we believe, leads to more sales and more interest in the products. So I think the way they’re being displayed, and the interactivity and the ability of people to talk directly to authors––all these things, we think, will just raise the level of interest in the products.
Extra: What were the goals behind specifically the redesign of the BN.com homepage? While retaining “the feel” of the previous homepage, it has a new look and several new features.
Toulantis: That was something we struggled with. We didn’t want to make it so different that you’d come to it and say, “My God, what is this?” So if you really analyze it, it’s not a huge departure, but it is a departure … that’s exactly what we were trying to achieve.
Extra: Another new feature you’ve added is The Barnes & Noble Review, an online literary magazine. Why launch an online magazine at this time?
Toulantis: It goes with the whole spirit of the site, which is about content and community, and bringing more value and interest to our customers, and having them feel more engaged with the products … through [for example] an interesting interview with someone like Philip Roth. … Also, [we’ll have] a “Weekly Spotlight”––what’s hot and what’s new this week. We’ll [also] have what we call “The Long List.” Those will be the top 50 books, films and CDs that you can’t miss this week. So we’ll have a lot of really fun features. …
Extra: Will it publish weekly?
Toulantis: It will have reviews daily. Certain pieces of it will publish weekly, but certain parts of it will be daily. …
This is just a start, and we’ll see what the reaction is to it and take any suggestions our customers might have, and hopefully enhance and improve on it as it goes. … I think it’s a great start, and I think, so far, it’s been well-received.
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