Site Profile
Description: The band required a comprehensive website which stood out from their competition and could also compete against the major recording artist websites. A strong sense of brand identity was required throughout the site and usability and accessability were to have the highest priority. The website also required many challenging functionality issues such as a paid user membership system, cms, integrated ecommerce functionality, newsletter integration, seo optimisation and pulling in feeds from youtube and twitter.Case Study: The challenge
Koala Friday is a popular band located in Brighton, East Sussex, UK. As an avid enthusiast of music I jumped at the chance of helping an up and coming band. Koala Friday's aim was to build a strong web presence right from the beginning so the band could one day be a major player in the entertainment sector.
The band required a comprehensive website which stood out from their competition and could also compete against the major recording artist websites. A strong sense of brand identity was required throughout the site and usability and accessibility were to have the highest priority.
The concept behind the functionality
The website required some complex functionality such as:
* User registration
* Paid user membership system
* CMS to manage the websites content
* Integrated e-commerce functionality
* Newsletter integration
* Event calendar
* Search engine optimisation and web analytics setup
* Pulling in feeds from other websites and web services
With complex functionality though comes a danger of a site quickly becoming unusable, even guilty of not addressing the needs of the core user base. The whole ethos behind the Koala Friday website was to enable fans to see the latest information about the band, in one place, as quickly and as simply as possible.
With so many different promotional web services and tools available today (i.e. Twitter, Myspace, Facebook pages), new problems are introduced regarding tracking common user journeys and analysing what users want to see. The site therefore was designed to centralise all of the web services which Koala Friday utilise, i.e. pulling in data from web services and presenting within the site seamlessly.
Another facet of the redesign was to take some of the pressure off the management time involved in keeping all of the different web services and blogging sites up to date. It was decided that the site would contain one blog, which other sites could pull data from. At every step it was made sure data was not repeated unnecessarily elsewhere on the web.
How Si Davies delivered results quickly and effectively
By setting up clear directives and user processes for updating and managing the site, Koala Friday now have an effective online marketing tool which they can manage, and offer as a benefit to their fans and a useful revenue stream for themselves.
This website will now help the band to analyse the scale of their fan base, the geological demographic and enable them to analyse what their fans want to see and hear, therefore giving them a better tool to grow from strength to strength.
