Katie Price
Background & Brief
Katie Price's Fan Club management team approached Message to build an exclusively online home for the emerging Katie Price brand, as distinct from her other persona, Jordan.
The main reason for developing the website was that the two sides of Katie address different audiences, and the existing Jordan Fan Club website wasn't able to adequately serve the younger and predominantly female fans. A high priority for the site was also to ensure the safety and security of Katie's young fans.
We worked closely with the Katie Price Fan Club team to develop the strategy for this online Members' Club.
Visual Design
We created a distinctive site to interpret and help define Katie's brand and values. The site has a very feminine look and feel, reflecting Katie Price's personality and her appeal to a younger female audience.
Content and Navigation
Our content management system, SweetCMS, is at the core of the website's information architecture and navigation. A key feature is that it enables fast and easy website updating requiring no knowledge of HTML.
The site includes a certain amount of content that is open to the public, but only members can access all areas of the site.
The business imperative is to encourage people to join the website in order to get at the members-only content. Message developed elements of the site that we knew would appeal to this audience as well as be commercially viable. One example of this is the monthly subscription fee in addition to the already-existing annual membership fee.
User Safety and Security
A high priority when developing the site was the safety and security of Katie's young fans. Message recommended that there was no open forum or chat room where two chatters can talk in private.
We created a bespoke chat room that only allowed chats to be held on the website when Katie was in attendance. This means that all conversations on the site happen in view of a large number of other users, reducing the risk of abuse.
Member Management
Members details are held in a central database, allowing the administrator to see all the relevant details such as name, address, email and so on. They can also see the person's join date, renewal date etc. and control their membership privileges.
As the system retains the date members join, this is used to trigger automated renewals. Members whose payments lapse are changed to 'pending' status and their access privileges are suspended - entirely automatically.
Accessibility and Web Standards
We build all our sites to be Web Standards compliant and accessible to disabled people.
Given Katie's high-profile connections to children's charities and her own personal experience, the Katie Price site has been built to go beyond basic accessibility requirements, creating a 'best practice' site that demonstrates her commitment to the issue.
This approach enhances not only the functionality of the site (for example, in relation to search engine optimisation) but also its longevity and value for money.
Content Protection
The Jordan site suffered in the past from people trying to access the content free of charge. The most common way this has happened is by a legitimate user 'sharing' their password, or posting it to the internet for others to use.
To avoid similar abuse with the Katie Price website, the method of password protection we have implemented allows Message to log the usage, and detect if a given user appears to be accessing the site from an 'unreasonable' number of different internet locations. If such use is detected, the user's membership status is automatically switched to 'pending' and an email sent by us to them as well as the site's administrator.
'Bandwidth theft' is another way in which the site content can be abused, this time by third party sites linking directly to member-only or other content. This is handled by ensuring that requests for such content are only allowed if the request originates from the Katie Price website itself.
E-commerce
Message developed an online shop for the Katie Price site which is open to all visitors. However, if logged-in as a Member you will see different content.
This allows the same item to be priced differently for example, so that members are offered special discounts not available to the public. It also allows items to be released to members in advance and certain items to be exclusive to members, such as signed calendars and prints.
When someone's browsing the shop while not logged-in messages such as "Become a member to receive these additional benefits…" etc. are displayed to encourage users to subscribe.
The use of our own system, SweetCart, to build the online shop means that no third-party system is used, allowing it to be completely integrated into the site, giving it a professional appearance and functionality.
From a user's perspective, they can easily edit the contents of their cart, and secure payments are made through the online payment.
Once the transaction is completed, both buyer and merchant receive email confirmations, including a link to a dynamically generated page.
Our system also includes a product management interface with allows the site administrator to create, edit and delete products, and create special offers and cross-sell items. Furthermore, the administrator can see at a glance which products are bestsellers and whether or not campaigns or special promotions are effective in driving traffic to the site and encouraging more members and increased product sales.
Fulfillment
Message designed the back end function so that when visitors make a purchase, the e-commerce back end clearly displays each product and makes it easy for the administrator to see which products need to be sent to whom.
