The initial round of branding for JrockRevolution.com (JRR.com) saw a burst of popularity for the website. Our success in developing JRR.com was so overwhelming that we effectively outgrew and outpaced the site. As such, this created multiple challenges for us, which required several creative solutions.

The original design and architecture of JRR.com was extremely limiting in its functionality, and was insufficient to accommodate the site’s needs and support its continued expansion. Moreover, the site’s appearance, including the logo, were outdated and not visually strong, which led to a diminished customer experience. We decided to perform a complete site rehaul from the ground-up, as well as a refreshed look and feel.

The loyal fanbase we built in the initial 6 months of our brand marketing strategy for Jrock Revolution was integral to the continued success of the site. As our target market was incredibly technologically savvy and spent the majority of their recreational time on the Internet, we had to be careful about any major changes we made to the site. A customer-centric approach was critical to all decisionmaking, prioritizing customer experience.

Our team rebuilt the site architecture around content organization and structure for the best searchability, created a great front-end design to refresh the appearance. We also redesigned the site logo to give it a more modern, edgy look that would vibe better with our target market, using motifs from the original logo.

To make sure that the new site would be accepted by JRR.com’s community, we unrolled a beta version of the site using Expression Engine. Once the beta version launched, we engaged the community and invited them to become part of the redevelopment of the website by providing us with feedback, suggestions, complaints, etc.

This strategy established a sense of ownership amongst the loyal fanbase, creating an even stronger brand loyalty for the site. Following this initial test period, we produced a final rebuild in Joomla, which provided us with optimal media capability.

As part of a small marketing push, during the week leading up to the site going live, we featured a countdown to the launch to build buzz, get people talking, and generate interest, resulting in a significantly higher volume of traffic on the site than it normally received.

In addition to revamping the site, we also expanded our e-commerce store on the site to include branded merchandise our team designed. All efforts contributed to establish the brand’s new identity in our audience’s minds.

CONCLUSION

After the final launch of JRR 2.0, 100% of the target audience indicated in surveys that they were more satisfied with the newer version of the site than with the former, stating that it was far more organized, and attractive. 100% of the site’s fanbase also preferred the new logo and image. Due to the overwhelming receptiveness of our market, it took very little time for our rebranding strategy to take effect.

This allowed us to launch a massive volunteer recruitment effort to expand the site’s team to over 100 members in countries worldwide, which made it possible for us to provide coverage of events worldwide.

In addition, the website’s bounce rate decreased by 18.4% and visitor duration increased by 73%.

Within 6 months of launching the new site, we successfully doubled JRR.com’s traffic, forum users, and followers across all social media channels.

GALLERY