During foliage season, so many buses clog Vermont's country roads that
you might imagine we had public transportation up here. Alas, no. On
the other hand, there is one thing Vermont does have, and that's
regionality.
If hospitality, the subject of my last column, is a gracious retail welcome, regionality is an irresistible invitation. And here's rule number one when you find yourself blessed with a high dose of regionality: If you've got it, flaunt it, especially online.
Vermont's raison d'être in the state's post-dairy-farm incarnation is to flaunt its regionality. You can read about it in Vermont Life or Vermont Magazine or even in Archer Mayor's mystery novels. You can buy it in myriad forms and flavors from companies like the Vermont Country Store or Maple Grove Farms or Cabot Creamery or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. You can even anthropomorphize it or visit its grave. (As Mr. Frost wrote, "The living come with grassy tread/ To read the gravestones on the hill.")
Vermont sells, even online. Bookstores are no exception to that rule. Misty Valley Books, Village Square Booksellers and Northshire Bookstore are among many that have found their own ways of tapping into regionality. Their Web sites say, emphatically, "You're not in Kansas anymore." (Note: If you want to be in Kansas, the KU Bookstores site leaves no doubt as to its regional identity.)
In contemporary America, regionality can be hard to come by on the ground, thanks to shopping malls, strip malls and, more recently, "lifestyle centers" (open malls landscaped to look like quaint village streets, but more closely resembling Hollywood studio back lots).
The Internet, however, makes regionality much easier to depict. Online, for better or worse, we are what we pretend to be. Despite this creative edge, many bookshop Web sites seem to be masquerading as nondescript strip mall storefronts. The bricks and mortar versions of these sites may be unusual and marvelous places, but you'd never guess this when visiting them online.
It doesn't have to be that way. I thought it might be fun this time to invite you aboard my virtual tour bus for a whirlwind visit to a few bookstore Web sites that do flaunt their regionality.
For example, if we cruise the northeastern seacoast, we can visit Harbor Books in Connecticut, Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha's Vineyard, Kennebunk Book Port and Sherman's Books & Stationery in Maine. We can even find our way inland to the River's End Bookstore on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Out west, the Well Red Coyote has a beautiful site that evokes, to put it bluntly, both sense of place and breadth of product line. And how can you not feel at home with the Front Street Books logo featuring a cowboy with his feet resting on a stack of books? The Montana Book & Toy Company also uses graphics and color effectively to regionalize its site.
Consider the stark and startling home page photograph at Iconoclast Books or the effective simplicity of text and image at Plains Trading Company Bookstore.
If we head to Mississippi, we encounter a post-Katrina revival at Pass Christian Books and the quiet southern charm of Square Books. By the way, I've noticed that photographs of bookshop storefronts are ubiquitous online (as are photos of sleeping cats), but the photos that draw me in are those, like Square Books, that give me a sense of the town or neighborhood where the shop is located, rather than an out-of-date shot of its window displays.
Where are you? That is the question.
Does it help to live in a scenic country setting when projecting a bookshop's regionality online? Probably, though Book Soup offers Sunset Strip regionality, Three Lives & Co. offers Greenwich Village regionality, and Urban Think! Bookstore offers downtown Orlando regionality.
And if you have a Booksense.com Web site, you can still regionalize effectively within the template. Witness what's being done by Cook Inlet Book Company in Alaska, Millrace Bookshop in the Gristmill in Connecticut, Riverwalk Books and Liberty Bay Books in Washington, Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona or Nantucket Bookworks "on the island."
Foliage season is now over in the bricks-and-mortar version of my state, but the illusion of Vermont autumn lingers on, thanks to the online magic of regionality. Unless your bookstore is on Three Mile Island, there is some aspect of your locale that is worth highlighting on the Web to give visitors a sense of your place.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
If hospitality, the subject of my last column, is a gracious retail welcome, regionality is an irresistible invitation. And here's rule number one when you find yourself blessed with a high dose of regionality: If you've got it, flaunt it, especially online.
Vermont's raison d'être in the state's post-dairy-farm incarnation is to flaunt its regionality. You can read about it in Vermont Life or Vermont Magazine or even in Archer Mayor's mystery novels. You can buy it in myriad forms and flavors from companies like the Vermont Country Store or Maple Grove Farms or Cabot Creamery or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. You can even anthropomorphize it or visit its grave. (As Mr. Frost wrote, "The living come with grassy tread/ To read the gravestones on the hill.")
Vermont sells, even online. Bookstores are no exception to that rule. Misty Valley Books, Village Square Booksellers and Northshire Bookstore are among many that have found their own ways of tapping into regionality. Their Web sites say, emphatically, "You're not in Kansas anymore." (Note: If you want to be in Kansas, the KU Bookstores site leaves no doubt as to its regional identity.)
In contemporary America, regionality can be hard to come by on the ground, thanks to shopping malls, strip malls and, more recently, "lifestyle centers" (open malls landscaped to look like quaint village streets, but more closely resembling Hollywood studio back lots).
The Internet, however, makes regionality much easier to depict. Online, for better or worse, we are what we pretend to be. Despite this creative edge, many bookshop Web sites seem to be masquerading as nondescript strip mall storefronts. The bricks and mortar versions of these sites may be unusual and marvelous places, but you'd never guess this when visiting them online.
It doesn't have to be that way. I thought it might be fun this time to invite you aboard my virtual tour bus for a whirlwind visit to a few bookstore Web sites that do flaunt their regionality.
For example, if we cruise the northeastern seacoast, we can visit Harbor Books in Connecticut, Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha's Vineyard, Kennebunk Book Port and Sherman's Books & Stationery in Maine. We can even find our way inland to the River's End Bookstore on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Out west, the Well Red Coyote has a beautiful site that evokes, to put it bluntly, both sense of place and breadth of product line. And how can you not feel at home with the Front Street Books logo featuring a cowboy with his feet resting on a stack of books? The Montana Book & Toy Company also uses graphics and color effectively to regionalize its site.
Consider the stark and startling home page photograph at Iconoclast Books or the effective simplicity of text and image at Plains Trading Company Bookstore.
If we head to Mississippi, we encounter a post-Katrina revival at Pass Christian Books and the quiet southern charm of Square Books. By the way, I've noticed that photographs of bookshop storefronts are ubiquitous online (as are photos of sleeping cats), but the photos that draw me in are those, like Square Books, that give me a sense of the town or neighborhood where the shop is located, rather than an out-of-date shot of its window displays.
Where are you? That is the question.
Does it help to live in a scenic country setting when projecting a bookshop's regionality online? Probably, though Book Soup offers Sunset Strip regionality, Three Lives & Co. offers Greenwich Village regionality, and Urban Think! Bookstore offers downtown Orlando regionality.
And if you have a Booksense.com Web site, you can still regionalize effectively within the template. Witness what's being done by Cook Inlet Book Company in Alaska, Millrace Bookshop in the Gristmill in Connecticut, Riverwalk Books and Liberty Bay Books in Washington, Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona or Nantucket Bookworks "on the island."
Foliage season is now over in the bricks-and-mortar version of my state, but the illusion of Vermont autumn lingers on, thanks to the online magic of regionality. Unless your bookstore is on Three Mile Island, there is some aspect of your locale that is worth highlighting on the Web to give visitors a sense of your place.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)