Email and website development in Gloucestershire Area

Emails

To reduce overhead costs and speed up communications we have actively encouraged the wider use of email communication both at Group and Area level. So far our successes have been mixed and of our eight groups the best achieved a 73% shift from snail mail to email. The worst managed 10% and the average was 35%. As a consequence we saved £250 in postage and printing costs alone for our last Annual Report and Accounts. However, an essential element in this policy change is the need for us to ensure that those members not connected to the web are properly catered for and not treated as second class citizens.

Website

I was concerned that Gloucestershire had no website and given Tom Franklin’s observation that 60% of new members were being recruited via the Ramblers website I concluded that we needed one quickly.

In early 2009, 37 Areas had sites so I trawled through the lot. This proved an interesting experience and demonstrated little or no consistency whatsoever in style and content between sites and a huge mishmash of designs, some of which were fine and a fair number both poor and out of date.

Having sifted through the websites and decided upon key headings it was fairly easy to write the script, but critical to developing our new site was the need to have professional advice in converting the script into a working site. In this regard we were fortunate to have the free services of Gloucester Walking Group member Nichola Goodliffe, who works as a graphic arts designer. Had we needed a local professional firm to carry out this work it would have cost £300-£500.

By a stroke of good fortune Nichola spotted that the Ramblers had a website template available and this was used to good effect throughout.

We view our new site at www.gloucestershirearearamblers.org.uk as a work in progress and critical to its success will be the future input of our members.

John Gerrard
Area Chairman - Gloucestershire