Senior Makes Site Accessible

If you visit a new site called wowOwow.com —or, formally, The Women on the Web—you'll find a guided tour hosted by none other than venerable gossip columnist Liz Smith.

She begins by explaining why a group of longtime friends—including Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg—decided to launch the site: "We've been sharing with each other. And now we want to share some of our thoughts, and some of our experiences, with you." The 85-year-old Smith then explains that the others nominated her for the video on the grounds that she's wowOwow.com's resident tech guru.

"That's what they think," she notes wryly.

But she acquits herself nicely. Because the site's target audience might not even know what "tech guru" means, Smith uses screenshots and clear explanations to illustrate the purpose of various departments, and to show visitors how to find them. An invitation to join the dialogue follows. "[R]egistering is easy," says Smith, "and it's free. First, click on register, then fill out the fields. You'll create your password right here, and hit the create new account button at the bottom." She also makes a helpful note of something we might taken for granted: "If you ever get lost, or you don't know where you are on our site, then just click on the logo at the top here and you'll come right back to our home page."

Smith—a familiar face and the most senior member of the group—uses a well-crafted script and her natural Texan charm to make wowOwow.com feel accessible to the site's entire audience. And that's Marketing Inspiration.