Kaboose
Client
Kaboose is the largest independent family focused online media company in North America and one of the top-five most visited family destinations online. From pregnancy to parenting, birthday parties to scrapbooking and entertainment to education, Kaboose has the content and applications to help parents plan and share their family life. Kaboose owns some of the world's leading online properties targeting families, including Kaboose.com, BabyZone.com, ParentZone.com, AmazingMoms.com, BirthdayInABox.com, TwoPeasInABucket.com, BubbleShare.com, Funschool.com and Zeeks.com, and helps the world's leading brands reach this highly coveted audience.
Challenge
Redesign site and add a community layer to leverage across all properties
The old Kaboose.com was a non appealing visual site that felt cluttered and full of advertisement. Kaboose.com was due for a new interface to that would allow for tighter integration of its properties. In addition, Kaboose wanted to make the site more appealing to return visitors. Rather than just publishing static content, Kaboose needed a suite of sticky applications that would provide fresh, user generated content for their site and make it a true destination for their audience.
Solution
Implement a new look-and-feel and add community platform
The SolutionSet design team started by designing the new site architecture and user interface to allow for tight integration between properties, an easy to use site, and true integration of community features throughout. The visual look and feel of the site were then re-designed by the creative team and coded by the front end team. The SolutionSet Community Services Platform (CSP) was leveraged and extended to provide cutting edge interactive features such as: blogs, discussions, rating, tagging, favorites, commenting, social networking, formation of groups, web based and email messaging, invite a friends, points system, photo gallery integration, rss feeds, and public profiles. Finally, the core team at Kaboose and SolutionSet worked together to integrate the new look and feel and community features into the main Kaboose website and its Bubble share affiliate through SOAP calls and JavaScript includes. The final solution: A new site with industry-leading visual design and community features which can be leveraged by Kaboose to enhance its leadership position in the market.
Technology Used
_SolutionSet Community Services Platform
_xHTML/CSS
_PHP/MySQL
_JavaScript
_SOAP
Recognition
_Official Honoree for the Community category in The 12th Annual Webby Awards, a distinction that places the work in the top 15% of the 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and more than 60 countries worldwide
Visit www.kaboose.com