If you want to see the potential of the internet a good place to start looking is the Marshalls website.

Admittedly Marshalls have got more resources than most stone companies to put into their website, both for its creation and frequent up-dating, but even apart from the videos, the celebrities and the interactive design elements, it has a clear purpose and message.

Marshalls have been banging the ecological and ethical drum for several years and you would hope their website would be part of that campaign, as indeed it is. It even has a connection to the ITV News website and a report on child labour in India that Marshalls contributed to. 

The Marshalls website even has its own television news section, where you can watch the latest news from the company.

And there is not just product and inspirational photography on view, there is a lot of interactivity, so, for example, you can even design your garden or driveway on-line using Marshalls’ Garden Visualiser and or Driveway Visualiser, which allows the householder to see what their specific project will look like with the Marshalls product of their choice in it. And you can easily change the product to see what different materials look like.

Apart from being helpful and even fun, it all keeps the visitor to the site on line to be exposed to the Marshalls brand for as long as possible and end up with a good feeling about it. And if someone has used the design elements of the site for their own project, they are likely to choose a Marshalls product for the project.

To make people feel comfortable about the Garden Visualiser program, the familiar face of TV gardener Sven Wombwell introduces it.

There are other celebrities (you can see what Marshalls did for Christopher Biggins’ garden in London, for example) that all make the website familiar, cuddly and warm. There are also other things to play with apart from the Visualisers, such as the Carbon Calculator that works out the carbon footprint of your particular project – and I can tell you that according to the calculater 18m2 of imported Haworth Moor sawn sandstone has a carbon footprint equivalent to 11/2 trees, which is 1,080kg of CO2.

There are separate sections of the website to cater for the different requirements of the public and professional designers, contractors who are Marshalls’ customers have been given passwords so they can log into their own area, and there is a shopping element.

A lot of what can be done with a website has been done by Marshalls and to pretty good effect. It is certainly something to aspire to.

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