Websites and on-line shops

The world of education in the UK is well-served by websites, from official government sites such as www.dfes.gov.uk (run by the Dept of Education and Skills) and TeacherNet (the government standards site for UK teachers.

Then there are the huge private sites such as Schoolzone that carry a lot of resources and accept advertising.   Our own Schools Directory website carries a link to every school in the country, and allows you to explore the Hamilton House schools' database as well as finding ways of getting into each school's website.

Additionally our Top 5 website contains details of hundreds of products and services aimed at schools, allowing teachers, administrators and managers to look up individual items with a single click of the mouse. This site is regularly promoted to schools through our email services to schools, through Education Management News, and via the School Administrators' Newsletter. Please click here if you are interested in knowing more about advertising on this site.

There are also all the websites of magazines related to education, plus the BBC Schools websites, and so on, and on, and on.  In short if you are looking for a website on something to do with education, several thousand people will already have put one up.

Which is both a strength and a weakness: a strength because everything you could ever want to find is there; a weakness because the market is so fragmented, and people are very likely to be jumping from place to place.

This vast variety of websites does not mean that you cannot make an impact with your own educational website, but it does need to be planned in terms of its potential audience and with a clear view as to why someone might choose to look at your website rather than anyone else's.

The Educational Marketing team at Hamilton House has been involved in planning and writing sites both for companies in the Hamilton House group (not least this site!) and for other companies in the education sector.  For more information please do get in touch.

On-line shops

Hamilton House has built a number of on-line shops selling everything from mailing lists and reports to books, CDs and T Shirts.

It costs around £1000 to set up an on-line shop - although the cost will be higher if you have a lot of stock items that need entering on the shop. There is also a charge of £20 per month for handling the credit card transactions - although again this can be higher if you go over 1000 transactions a quarter.

You can see examples of our on-line shops at:

http://www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk - book shop

http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/sch/index.php - school mailing lists

http://www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk/wwr/ - Witchwood records

This service can be linked to our virtual office and virtual warehouse services. To discuss your particular needs please call 01536 399 000 and ask for the Virtual Office division.