Website in the spotlight is a new weekly report about one of the many Eurovision Song Contest related websites there are. Get to know their stories and, more important, the dedicated people behind the websites. This week, we spoke with Edwin van Gorp, chairman of EurovisionArtists. We spoke about eurovisionartists.nl, which was launched on 1st March, 2002.
The team members
“Basically the whole board of the EurovisionArtists foundation is responsible for the content of the website. In actual practice, there are two people responsible for the technical part of the website, Daniëlle van der Waarden and myself. Most of the content is written by these two people as well, a part from some sections on the site. We send two people of the board of the foundation to the Eurovision Song Contest every year and they write reports on the website. This year Erik Oosterwijk and René van Beurden will take care of that. Next to that we have a section called “Memorabele Eurovisie Songs” (“Memorable Eurovision Songs”), that is written by Marion Minten and we have a columnist that works under a pseudonym, “Papa Pingouin”, but I can't reveal his true identity”, Edwin van Gorp said.
Why did you start your website?
“The EurovisionArtists foundation was founded in 1977 and our main goal is to provide Dutch media and Eurovision fans with correct information about the Eurovision Song Contest. At some point in time, the board of the foundation thought that we had to have a website as part of our means of communication. The main goal of the website was to provide media and fans with information about the foundation (the things we do and how to get in contact with us) as well as basic Eurovision information. The latter was added because we were asked for this kind of information very often by the media and we thought that we could spend less time in answering these questions by putting basic-information on our website”.
Can you tell us something about the development of your site since the launch?
“Well, as said, we wanted to give information about the foundation itself and basic Eurovision-information. This is rather static content and it has been on the site since it was launched. Of course we keep it up to date but that is not very time-consuming. In the beginning we also had a “latest news” section concerning the Eurovision Song Contest but keeping that up to date was too much work for just two people so we closed that section down and started to coorporate with esctoday.com and songfestival.nl to get the latest Eurovision headlines on our website”.
The website of EurovisionArtists improved along the way. “During the 3 years the site existed, we have added some little new features (the “Memorabele Eurovisie Songs” section is about a year old) and removed some others but basically, the content of the site has not changed much since the site was launched. The information provided is kept up-to-date of course but we haven't expanded the site very much. We don't need to do that since the site still meets our goals, provide the outside world with information about the foundation and basic Eurovision-information”, Edwin explains.
Can you share some statistics with us? Your most successful days, number of members, etc.
“We had our most successful day so far on 16th May, 2004, the day after the last Eurovision Song Contest. On that day we had 1182 visitors. We beated the record of 972 visitors we had a year earlier on the day after the Eurovision Song Contest and my guess is that we will attract more than 1182 visitors on the day after the contest in Kiev. Recently we had 345 visitors on the day after the Dutch national final. These figures aren't so bad, considering that the site is fully in Dutch and that we don't offer latest Eurovision news”.
Ther site doesn't have members although they do issue a newsletter (with foundation-news) to about 100 email addresses. The foundation itself has about 750 benefactors (subscribers to our magazine).
How would you describe your website?
“Our website is primary a source of information about the foundation, people can find out easily who we are and what we do. For that purpose, we have two main-sections, one about the foundation itself (who are we, contact-information, latest foundation news, activities, etc.) and one about the magazine we issue four times a year (EA-nieuws). In a third section we provide basic Eurovision-information, the kind of information the media wants most from us. It contains all artists names, titles, results and score sheets of all Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contests (accessible both by year and by country) and all artists names, songwriters names, titles and results of all Dutch national finals (accessible by year). In the fourth main-section of the site, we offer some “typical website features” such as a guestbook, links, a webshop (in coorporation with BEA-records), and an interactive election of the best Dutch Eurovision song”.
EurovisionArtists is always looking for benefactors and they feel that the media still can use their help, that is an addition to the service the foundation has provided in the last 28 years.
What would you improve if you would be esctoday.com's webmaster or chief editor?
“Open up the history-section! 😉 No, seriously, esctoday.com is the biggest and best-visited Eurovision-website around, and that is not for nothing. I can't think of any improvements for esctoday.com”. As representative of EurovisionArtists, Edwin van Gorp is currently working on esctoday.com its history section, which will be opened in the upcoming month.
Is there anything else you would like to share with us concerning your site?
“Come and visit our site to read who the EurovisionArtists foundation is (we have that part of the information in English as well), the more people know about us, the better it is!”
We kindly thank Edwin for being prepared to have an interview with us. Esctoday.com wishes the EurovisionArtists good luck in the future. Keep up the good work, guys!
