Hot97
News, Media, and Entertainment
Digital Strategy, Product Management, UX Design
Challenge
Hot97 has millions of followers and listeners across radio, social media, and their website. However, a significant percentage of these fans engage with the brand on channels that Hot97 does not own, particularly YouTube, resulting in surface-level engagement.
Hot97 needed a strategy to drive deeper engagement with their more profitable owned media channels, but their current website was not up to the task.
Strategy
Hot97 needed a new website to serve as the backbone of its owned-media strategy. The new site needed to:
Empower Hot97’s content creators to publish more engaging content
Serve as the content management platform for the new mobile application
Better represent Hot97's brand identity
Convert casual listeners into engaged, subscribed fans.
Approach
Open Source
WordPress’ Gutenberg block editor gave content creators more control over their content.
Single Source of Truth
The Website’s CMS powered the mobile app content management, creating a simple, unified environment for content managers.
Visual Overhaul
The site was redesigned from the ground-up to showcase the Hot97 Brand
Content Structure and Navigation
A robust new content structure delivered more valuable related content and set the stage for more powerful personalization.
Strategic Advertising
Ad inventory was overhauled to fit more seamlessly into the user experience to reduce the bounce rate and improve ad revenue.
Visual design elements like marquee text, repeated images, and ripped page effects call back to printed flyers and posters and reinforce Hot97’s brand identity.
Improved content metadata and better ad placements resulted in an improved end-of-article experience
Borrowing UX conventions from popular streaming sites allowed for more content to be displayed without taking up valuable real estate or overwhelming the user
A focus on video content and improved ad placements improved both the user experience and the monetary value of article pages.