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  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.

the challenge

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 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.

the solution

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 redesigned by the creative team and coded by the frontend team. The SolutionSet Community Services Platform (CSP) was leveraged and extended to provide cutting-edge interactive features such as blogs, discussions, ratings, tagging, favorites, commenting, social networking, formation of groups, web-based and email messaging, inviting friends, points systems, 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 BubbleShare affiliate through SOAP calls and JavaScript includes. The final solution: A new site with industry-leading visual design and community features that can be leveraged by Kaboose to enhance its leadership position in the market.

the result

In February 2009, Kaboose properties received nearly 5 million unique visitors.

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


• Silver Award recipient for the Family/Parenting category in the 2008 W3 Awards