If a listener hears something on the radio that interests them — whether it be a station event, a giveaway, a reference to something funny that the on-air talent is wearing — the first place they are going to go for more information is the station's website. If there is not a way for that listener to quickly and easily find what they are looking for, then it is very likely he or she will not return again. When that happens, you have lost a customer, and your website has failed.

For this reason, we at Broadcast Company of the Americas (BCA) think it is vital our website serves as the perfect complement to our on-air product, which means keeping content fresh and relevant to the message listeners are hearing. Often times the webmaster will keep things updated, but in most cases, the show's producer is responsible for making sure that any references made on-air can immediately be found on the website.

The unique needs of our radio station's website, as with other stations', are met, above and beyond, by the team of technical geniuses at Platformic. Not only has Platformic helped us design two great-looking websites, www.walrusfm.com and www.doublex1090.com, but the Platformic toolset enables us to keep our content dynamic and current, because just about anyone can use it. Now, instead of an on-air producer sending the webmaster something to get on the site (at 6 a.m.) and then having to wait for the webmaster to arrive to work (at 8 a.m.), the producers are able to get it up themselves at the moment of reference.

Radio is an extremely powerful complement to the Internet. When our on-air guys give our listeners a compelling reason to check something out on our site, we watch traffic skyrocket immediately. At BCA, we see it as our job, to not only make sure that listeners are able to find what they are looking for right away, but to also give them plenty of reason to stay on the site, and then return again and again. Platformic's tools give us the opportunity to provide content in a variety of medias, and we are currently offering content in the form of blogs, video, audio, RSS feeds and, of course, print.

Ongoing support

We have worked with Platformic for several years and the company continually upgrades the tools available to website visitors as well as backend users, and are excellent at keeping us up to date with any new products it brings to the table. This was why we initially decided to undergo the redesign of our sites; we wanted to create a site that was flexible enough to accommodate all of the company's new bells and whistles as soon as they became available, and our initial site was not built with this flexibility in mind, because we actually relied on an outside graphic designer to do the layout and not Platformic themselves. One thing I learned through this process — layout first, design second!