When it comes to engaging content, The Walt Disney Co. suffers from the classic embarrassment of riches.
Just this year, it’s seen the explosion of recording artists the Jonas Brothers. There’s also Miley Cyrus with the huge success of the live “Best of Both Worlds” tour and TV movie by Cyrus and her alter ego, Hannah Montana. Then there are the several iterations of the “High School Musical” franchise and the latest Pixar theatrical release, “Wall-E.”
But the Magic Kingdom has also been busy this past summer rebuilding the castle gate: namely, its main Web site, www.Disney.com.
That online entrance has just gone through the second stage of a revamp designed to make the site less a sales floor for all products Disney and more an engaging environment that will draw kids and their parents, entice them to stay longer, and lead them to return more frequently.
“The Internet site is the only place where the Disney brand, and all its different businesses, products and services, can all come together in one universe,” says Paul Yanover, Disney Online’s executive vice president and managing director. “If you stand at the front gate of Disney World, or sit home watching the Disney Channel, other aspects of Disney are not in your view. But on the Internet, those elements of the vastness of Disney are all collocated. So we put a lot of thought into organizing that collocation according to the way our consumers see us and want to interact with us.”
For one thing, the new portal includes new ways to navigate the site. Global navigation at the top of the page presents the company’s main product categories, with tabs for games, videos, movies, TV, live events, travel and parks, and shopping.
But the site also organizes around Disney franchises and characters. A revolving animated carousel at the foot of the home page lets users flip directly to the pages built around individual Disney properties such as “Cars” and “That’s So Raven.”
“That speaks to more of a kid’s view of Disney,” Yanover says. “To much of our audience, Disney is a collection of fabulous characters or stories. Basically, we tried to view the portal through the eyes of our guests and to figure out what they wanted to find.”
In terms of what’s available to be found, Disney.com is a much different experience from the site that existed two years ago. Disney has been on the Web since 1996, and the main Web site has gone through some big changes. Perhaps the largest occurred back in January 2007, when the company revamped its portal to add social networking elements and to build in more pure entertainment elements that would also, it was hoped, make it a more effective promotional platform for Disney’s many live, TV and recording properties.
This summer’s effort takes that push to engage and entertain even further, primarily through more extensive use of video, both original behind-the-scenes content and classic Disney fare. A video player is the biggest central element on the home page, featuring a playlist of “Disney.com Exclusives.”
Throughout the summer, Disney.com also featured a different classic movie from its vaults on the site each week. The movies were streamed free to visitors and supported with short pre-roll ads.
“That’s a pretty seminal change from where we were 18 months ago,” Yanover says. “To be able to go to our site right now and watch a full-length movie on our site right away at no cost — that’s a pretty clear statement that we want to create a true entertainment experience.”
Disney has also built or acquired a strong set of virtual worlds, including its own Toon Town and a new one based on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. The company acquired the wildly popular Club Penguin a year ago and plans more virtual experiences in the near future, including one based on the Pixar movie “Cars” and another aimed at young girls, “Pixie Hollow.”
That last will launch this fall and will include both offline elements — toys that unlock digital features within the world, Webkinz-style — and a mobile component that lets players tend their avatars via handsets.
These successive waves of change in content and design are apparently having their intended effect on both traffic and engagement. Metrics from comScore show that Disney.com had a record 30 million-plus unique visitors in June 2008, up 28% from the same period last year. Just as important, the site saw big jumps in the metrics of engagement, with 65% increases in both total visits and daily total minutes spent on the site compared to June 2007.
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