How Kootenay Mall Works.
Users can come here to find out more about Kootenay Mall.
Here you see a real town in the Kootenays,
except it’s NOT the real town but just a picture of it. It’s “virtual”, which means that, unlike the real buildings, we can put anything “in” them that we want. The logic is only similar to the real world: Although the hyperlinks lead to the web page of a local business, we pretend that they are “in” a building or a window, a car, lane, or even just a sign.
The town in this picture may have as many of the real businesses as the real town does,
but it can also hold links to businesses from other Kootenay towns (it’s a rule: You have to be in the Kootenays).
That means a business could exist “virtually” in any of the 20+ locations in Kootenay mall.
Alternatively, an existing business could host links to other businesses; which is to say that, when Shoppers click on the image of your business, they are shown a page just for your business that displays other links as well.
Doing this makes web searches simple and logical: Clothing, electronics and toys, etc are always in the buildings downtown,
and always in a similar placement, while hardware, mechanics and industrial supplies are nearby, and so on and so forth.
The days of scanning page upon page of irrelevant results are gone.
The restrictions are what you expect:
Cars, buildings and signs only appear where expected, all storefronts will fit into their business community, theme-wise. Having said that, there is a lot of room for marketing magic and advertising in each city.
This is a slice of the standard “Portico”, found on the 3rd floor of some buildings.
Notice the people? They are place-holders for more hyperlinks when viewing KM on a laptop, or visual cues of where to look for a link when searching KM on your phone.
These folks are just shoppers, but they could be a picture of someone local, and that image could be a link to their personal website.
Models, Consultants, PAs and others can advertise tastefully without resorting to gaudy banner ads.
This limited version of VR holds even more potential as other media are explored. Radio, for example, is an option.
Other aspects of web design permit video presentations and animations.
The cities on KM are laid out according to the real geographical locations.
You can explore the Kootenays through shopping local.
This internal direction banner above leads to KM Sales pages at present,
But, as you can see, there is plenty of room for tasteful advertising without the chaos of distractions, lists and visual 'noise'. Just like the Kootenays, KM is easy on the eyes.
