Author: Sara Chavdarova Gradinarska

 
This project serves as a resource for budding small business owners and marketing enthusiasts, who want to expand their current digital marketing knowledge and increase their consumer base. Despite the abundance of marketing guides on the internet, they are mainly geared towards working professionals or people with significant preexisting knowledge of digital marketing. In addition, the majority of resources currently available online are in an uninviting blog post format and contain conflicting claims. Clickmate recognizes the need for a concise and welcoming information hub for innovations in the digital marketing field. The use of the recipe-style format ensures easy accessibility to the information and a welcoming interface and design, limiting any anxieties a new learner may have. The project’s main goal is to serve as a framework for education and simplification of the process of implementing digital marketing strategy and building an online presence. The core ideas explored through the project are the importance of knowledge of digital marketing techniques for small businesses owners and the various analytical tools needed to measure consumer engagement.

The project is an extension of the critical academic analysis displayed in my research paper. The paper aimed to study and visualize the changing forms of advertising and their related media technologies in order to provide marketers with the necessary knowledge of modern day digital marketing. ClickMate is based on the extensive research conducted in my paper which highlighted the challenges that arise for small businesses in an increasingly digitized global marketing landscape and the elements of technology that are reshaping the marketing landscape. The project serves as a tool for solving these problems, with a modern and creative approach through a cookbook format.

ClickMate is a multi-layered website, organized in a recipe-style cookbook format, with helpful tips and step-by-step advice on digital marketing terms. It utilizes the multi-faceted application of design and website coding techniques through the prototyping tool Figma.Users are exposed to an attractive homepage with cookbook- themed images and “recipes” on topics such as digital disturbance, Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization tags (SEO), a digital marketing basics guide and a framework for distinguishing between shopping and text ads. Clickable buttons and simple navigation allow any user to interact with ClickMate, without distracting screen elements. A glossary of relevant digital marketing terms is included to further assist users. The benefits of using ClickMate transcend beyond the confines of an academic assignment and can be enjoyed by college students, professors and young entrepreneurs as a source of inspiration and knowledge in their business education journey. A future development of the project can be its modification into a Google browser extension which delivers helpful “recipes” as users work on their website.