Fresh

Crafting a Better Experience

We have all sorts of fantastic projects that we get to do on a day-to-day basis. Some amazing clients come to us with challenging problems and often we feel very proud of the solutions. Solutions we think many of you’d probably like to see, and more importantly, know the thinking behind. This is what prompted us to start this new series called Fresh Projects. We hope you’ll find it useful and interesting. As always, we’d love to hear comments and critiques on whether we hit the mark.

This first time around we wanted to show a recently launched site we did for Wacom Technologies – namely, Pen Scrappers – a resource for digital scrapbookers.

Although we had previously worked with Wacom to create the first iteration of Pen Scrappers – which was essentially a contest site that helped generate awareness for Wacom’s Bamboo Craft pen tablet – we were given the chance this time around to up the ante. Wacom had identified this audience as one that they could talk to more specifically, and they wanted to foster the community that already existed by creating a website that would be a strong resource for those looking to hone their craft.

The solution we came to focuses on keeping the best of what worked in the previous site, including a core contest engine that gave scrapbookers a chance to win prizes for submitting work, and a panel of notable peers in the scrapping community that would help provide inspiration and guidance.

Beyond this, however, we produced a few notable improvements:

• Refreshed the overall look and feel to fit various content, regardless of the season (previously there were seasonal themes)
• Implemented a unique scrolling sidebar navigation that provides quick jump-off to other areas in the site (more apparent on large screens)
• Helped improve hierarchy with lots of new content by using a background color structure to focus attention
• Introduced an improved browsing experience for viewing contest entries with the “filmstrip” carousel on entry pages
• Cross-promoted new content on the site through ad-style buckets on the bottom of each page
• Structured a new section for lessons and tutorials from various sources – including the notable Pen Scrappers – with rating and comments to improve relevancy of content
• Integrated and improved the dialogue by way of email with users to help improve engagement and prompt timely interactions

So how did this all work out for the audience? From the initial analytics, things have gone really well. In the first week, the site received almost 4,000 unique visits, with an average time on the site of just over 4 minutes, and an average of 5.2 pages visited.

Anecdotally, the feedback from users and the client have been really positive, and the audience seems very engaged and enthusiastic. Overall, its great to see this community have a place to come together and have a voice for their craft. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think, we’d love to hear it.