Sparkling web content management

A new website, www.change-act-share.org.uk, is at the heart of a strategic programme intended to reinvigorate the UK’s jewellery sector. Enterprise Information spoke to Jewellery Sector Investment Plan representatives Fiona McKeith and Rabiya Hussain to find out more.

By Jessica Twentyman

Enterprise Information (EI): Fiona, let’s start with the basics – what is the Jewellery Sector Investment Plan (JSIP) and what are its goals?

Fiona McKeith (FM): Basically, JSIP is a partnership project between the London Borough of Camden, the Goldsmiths’ Company [a City livery], the City Fringe Partnership and the London Development Agency [economic development and regeneration bodies]. These organisations have come together to fund an initiative, the JSIP, which aims to revitalise the world of British jewellery and to capitalise on the UK’s global reputation for fashion, innovation and quality.

A good deal of the in-depth research that we’ve conducted suggests that much could be done to improve the competitiveness of the sector and more effective information sharing between the different players in the jewellery industry is a big, big part of that – so one of the JSIP’s major projects has focused on setting up an online hub for that kind of collaboration.

EI: What sort of information do companies in the sector need to share with each other and what, historically, have been the barriers to that sharing?

FM: What we found are two main problems. First, that there are lots of things going on in the industry, but people simply didn’t know about them because there wasn’t a single place where they could access information about events, training, business opportunities and so on. Second, we also found that businesses in the industry often need to collaborate – if, for example a manufacturer gets a large order, it may use a firm of [gem] setters to help them to fulfil the order – but they tend to work with established contacts again and again, because they don’t know who else is out there.

Basically, collaboration just doesn’t come naturally to those in the jewellery business. They are very security conscious for obvious reasons and that has a tendency to carry over into being quite uncommunicative and not sharing information because of the perceived risks of doing so. It’s a cultural issue and a major challenge – the industry is made up of many micro-businesses, many of them family-run, and it’s rare to venture outside your own small network of contacts even if a wonderful opportunity is just two doors down the street.

That’s where the ‘ChangeActShare’ website [www.change-act-share.org.uk] comes in – it aims to fill the information gap by providing a means to communicate what’s happening in the industry, to help foster a sense of community and help industry players to identify useful contacts and form meaningful partnerships with them.

The name is intended to provide a call to action – it’s a name that says exactly what the jewellery industry needs to do. The UK is a hotbed of design and can boast the most skilled craftspeople in the world. But it needs to broadcast that message more widely, in a really positive way. ChangeActShare is intended to stimulate a change in culture so that the industry becomes more forward-thinking. It’s way more than just an information resource – it’s a catalyst to information-sharing that will be vital if we’re to work successfully together towards a common goal.

EI: So what does the website offer in order to help jewellery-sector companies to make that change?

FM: Well, the unique selling point of ChangeActShare is its business finder. This is an online directory that includes the designers, manufacturers, materials suppliers, retailers, media partners, equipment and technology providers, and professional service firms that make up (or work with) the jewellery sector. You’ll see that there are hundreds of companies, many operating in tiny niches of the industry – gold bullion suppliers, diamond graders, CAD [computer aided design] software vendors. Some provide just a telephone number, some an e-mail, some their website address – whatever they’re comfortable with.

But what’s important is that the information is presented in a very neutral fashion – we don’t promote one member over another and we don’t make any recommendations. These are just listings and the companies can choose what details they want to display.

In addition, the website also features up-to-the-minute industry news, information on industry events, updates on the progress of other JSIP-funded projects and links to vital industry resources including training and education programmes. That was all included in phase one of the implementation project, which concluded with the site’s roll-out in May 2006.

EI: And what are your plans for the future?

FM: In phase two, which we’re just starting now, we’re planning the JSIP Forum. This will make the site much more interactive because members will be able to submit questions to be answered by industry experts. Over time, this will create a vast, searchable knowledge bank for the jewellery industry and allied trades. We’ve put a lot of thought into this, but there’s still a lot of research to do. Jewellery businesses can often feel isolated and we hope that the Forum will give them an opportunity to form new support networks. How it develops is really up to the users.

For example, there could be an area where people feedback their experiences of trade shows here or abroad, informing future exhibitors’ decisions about where to show.

Rabiya Hussein (RH): We’re doing all the research right now – seeing what else is out there and so on – and we hope to launch the JSIP Forum in April or May this year. We envisage multiple ‘strands’ to the forum – some looking at technical issues, some looking at business development issues and so on. We need to take a good, hard look at what is already out there and that will determine to a very large extent the shape that the JSIP Forum takes.

EI: Clearly, for the website to achieve its goals, it needs to attract an audience. What are you doing to build a real sense of community and involvement around the site?

FM: It’s quite a challenge but it is one that I think we’ve cracked. The industry is a traditional manufacturing industry, but embracing new technology is absolutely critical if we are to realise our full potential and capitalise on London’s status as the international capital of style. The industry has lots of non-technical people in it – we reckon that up to 50 per cent of businesses are still not online.

So we worked very closely with web-design house, Blast, to ensure that the site is accessible and usable – that the design is fresh, uncluttered and contemporary. That was a top priority because the site obviously has to appeal to people in what is a very design-led industry. But there’s also quite a bit of technology behind building up the community. I’ll let Rabiya explain that.

RH: Behind the site are two pieces of software. The first is the Contentworkz content-management system from GlobusMedia. The second is Emailworkz, also from GlobusMedia. Emailworkz enables us to capture the contact details of website visitors and store them. It also enables us to send out regular information and e-mail newsletters and bulletins to the community. So together, Contentworkz and Emailworkz integrate together to offer a complete content management and online-marketing system.

FM: The e-mail newsletters and bulletins are a good way of bringing companies into our community and making them feel involved. They can subscribe to different kinds of information, according to their interests and preferences, so it’s tailored to suit their individual needs. The JSIP Forum will continue to build on that sense of involvement.

EI: And how does the content-management system (CMS) help in the day-to-day work of running ChangeActShare?

RH: Well, it makes our lives a lot easier in several ways. For example, when I publish content to the site, I include a date when it should automatically be removed, and that’s never failed me yet. It’s critical, in fact, in ensuring that the website is completely up-to-date. Also, the CMS is easy to use and that’s a major factor in us feeling positive about it. That helps us to be flexible and to respond to the needs of our members very easily. For example, creating a new category on the business finder or changing navigation tabs in a matter of minutes.

We expect our use of the system’s functions to grow over time. You have to remember that, while our plans are big, the actual team is very small – it’s just the two of us, myself and Fiona. So, because of that, we don’t really need an approval workflow, but it’s quite possible that we will do if the team grows in future and that’s something that Contentworkz supports.

Other features include WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] editing, automatic image-optimisation and search-engine optimisation – and the same goes for these. That’s to say, we may not need all those features now, but we may do in future. The most important thing is that the underlying infrastructure of ChangeActShare will enable us to do all sorts of different things and it’s flexible enough for it to grow as the project grows.

EI: So beyond the introduction of the Forum, what else do you have planned?

FM: There’s nothing really concrete. But it’s clear to us that the website has to maintain a close match with the overall objectives of JSIP. These include stimulating greater demand for British-designed jewellery at home and abroad, building capacity through education and skills training, and regenerating and enhancing facilities to encourage a more contemporary industry culture of partnership and collaboration. The web, we think, is an exciting and dynamic place to do all of these things.

Fiona McKeith is jewellery sector development manager in the community development and regeneration department at the London Borough of Camden. Rabiya Hussein is jewellery sector communications officer at the council.

They can be contacted by e-mailing fiona.mckeith@camden.gov.uk and rabiya.hussain@camden.gov.uk, respectively.