I wrote my first description yesterday to brief the web developer - it's the first time I've actually written it down. Before this, if you asked me to explain my new idea, I'd still be talking 30 minutes later. At least I've got it down to 250 words!
4Manchester Women is a free daily magazine style blog and directory specifically for busy Manchester women.
Our on-line lifestyle articles are intelligent, humorous and observational. Our aim is to be entertaining and practical.
We cover anything from restaurants to recipes, fashion to family days out, travel to trades people and money saving tips to music and gigs – bringing you the best offers, reviews, recommendations and top 10’s that we can find.
Articles can be easily found under one of four headings – ‘Hotty’, ‘Homey’, ‘Mummy’ or ‘Lively’. See what we did there? 4Women / four categories – we’re not saying that you are one or the other, just that there’s a little bit of each of them in all of us. We are all colours of the rainbow. Talking of which, each category has its own colourful identity, so readers can quickly find the articles they most want to read.
4Manchester Women bangs the drum for Manchester and we love local independent businesses which give the city and its ‘burbs such character. We are proud of where we live and we’ve got serious hutzpah. We like to let Manchester Women know ‘what’s on’, places to go and things to do and we like getting out there. Sometimes we head further afield, but we always take our Manc humor with us.
While 4Manchester Women has one editor we feature a number of guest bloggers. We are for real Manchester women written by real Manchester women. We are your daily dose of local Manchester life – “By eck!”
What this doesn't say is that I'm hoping to develop a model that I can franchise to people in different areas, the site will generate income through advertising (primarily local independents) and events.
Thank you also to everyone who completed my on-line research. I had 99 brilliant respondents. I've not analysed everything yet but here are a few initial results:
The ladies answering the survey considered themselves to be:
17% Hotty (fashion, bars, restaurants, hair & beauty)
32% Mummy
27% Homey (cookery, interior design, gardening, craft)
23% Lively (travel, health & wellbeing, sport & fitness, music & gigs, theater & cinema)
All anonymous, so any mommy who scored themselves less than 50% shouldn't feel guilty and won't be reported to social services!
They are interested in:
82% Cooking
78% Restaurants
70% Health & Wellbeing
61% Travel
60% Money Saving Tips
60% Cinema
54% Child Friendly Venues
52% Books
52% Interior Design
48% Theatre
45% Fashion
43% Sport & Fitness
And when it came to competitions, offers, reviews, recommendations and top 10's, they ranked them accordingly:
3.45 (Most interested): Offers & discounts.
3.43: Top 10's
3.40: Recommendations (e.g. trades people)
2.93: Reviews
1.79 (Least interested): Competitions
In terms of what they are currently reading:
16% Sunday Times Magazine
15% Hello
14% OK
13% Red
13% Saturday Guardian
12% Cosmopolitan
11% Marie Claire
10% Runners World
10% Grazia
10% House Beautiful
However, 20% of respondents replied 'none' because they either don't have time, don't think there is anything relevant for them or they get their information on-line.
There is bags of really great information for me to wade through, so thank you again. It has really made me think and shape my ideas.
And finally - this is only the very first design and I have made quite a few changes, but I wanted to show you how my idea is coming to life - the colours, the logo and the general look and feel. Once I have a dummy site up and running, I'll be asking for more feedback and for people to have a play.
Here it is - I'm really excited and I need to say a really big thank you to Emma Burke for all her design expertise and general amazing brilliance!
I'll be working with the web developer to make sure it works well on phones as that's how 47% of you access the internet.
All I'm going to say is "Watch this space!"
