Watch out, world wide web!

James Kell • Published 23 Jul 2009 18:00 0 Comments

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WOODLEY will have a brand new showcase on the world wide web from today (Thursday), which town bosses hope will help them battle the recession.

The town centre will for the first time have its own designated website to attract shoppers and visitors to the town, in the hope they will spend money in the Woodley Precinct shops.

Town centre manager Jacques Lherbier has been working on

www.woodleytowncentre.co.uk

for the last five months with web developers, Simple Design. He said: "It's tough for everyone at the moment, but my job is to increase footfall through Woodley and this is one way to try and do that.

"The current town council website is what it is, it has certain types of information on it but it's not a commercial site. I hope the traders who are not yet signed up will see this site and think 'I want to be a part of that'."

The site has contact details for shops in Woodley Precinct as well as special offers, details of markets coming to the town and a host of other information.

Mr Lherbier said: "Part of the idea is that people in Woodley can interact with the site by posting comments, so hopefully it will grow into something really interesting and we are trying to link up with as many organisations in Woodley as possible."

John Baker, owner of Chapter One Bookshop in Woodley Precinct, said: "We have a lot of events which we think will have general appeal that we can publicise, and if it's an up-to-date website with good information then I think it could be really good. People in this area are very online-orientated, particularly the youngsters.

"It's quite a hard thing to do on your own as well as running a bricks and mortar shop, but if you can put up a taster of what you do online, people will know you are there. We're quite excited by it."

This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 23 Jul 09

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