View Entry

Company: Calm Asylum Communications Ltd.
Project: ItsJustaBitofFun.com

http://www.itsjustabitoffun.com

Dates: Nov 2007 to Dec 2009

How did the project start?

Its Just a Bit of Fun (www.itsjustabitoffun.com) was born on the back of the success of Calm Asylum's online interactive advent calendar in 2006 which attracted over 450,000 hits. Over 60,000 users were still visiting the calendar to continue enjoying the interactive and entertaining content in January and February 2007 so we decide to develop the website into a dedicated site for daily internet fun.

What options did you consider?

It was important to consider the current traffic to the existing Calm advent calendars and the new website including how we build on traffic levels through social networking tools and viral marketing. We also continue to develop our advent calendar product for a number of clients so it was important to consider the affect on the traffic levels of both client calendars and the IJABOF.com website.

What help and expertise did you receive?

All ideas, design, development of content work has been done in house using our web and marketing teams. Everybody working in the company is involved in collecting and updating entertaining movies, images and content for the website. The project has been embraced by all the team and provides a welcome break from commercial client work for the team to discuss how we can continue to evolve the website. Our web team has time to work on R&D for our web systems and the IJABOF.com web project gives a great opportunity for personal development and provides a valuable testing platform.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

It is very important that we developed a website that everybody can update within Calm so pressure was taken off the web design and development team. A browser CMS system was developed to add content into the website. We have also invested in time to discuss the types of content within the site to ensure that the content continues to appeal to a wide variety of audience groups. The management team within the company have also been discussing advertising and revenue opportunities to ensure that the project can become a sustainable income stream for the company.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

Since January 2008 we have seen over 0.5 Million unique users access to the website creating over 1 million page impressions. Returning traffic to the website is increasing to develop a regular audience and community for the website.

What are your plans for the future?

We are keen to develop the functionality of the website to allow users to create profiles and update content themselves to the website, including enhancing the search facility, plus rating and tagging content. The Facebook group is expanding and we plan on developing a Faceboook application for the website. With established profiles on DIGG and Stumble Upon we aim to increase traffic levels and develop the community around the website. The site is already attracting advertisers from the US and the UK to sponsor areas of the website and develop links affiliations which we will become a steady revenue stream for the project.