Coco Moon Limited offer lifestyle preferences for todays busy single professionals and are one of the most exclusive matchmaking companies in the UK. Their profile grows by the day under the direction of Managing Director and finalist in the O2 Female Entrepeneur of the Year Awards, Sharon Kell.

 

They commissioned ClarityWEB to take over their online operations in 2009, having already worked with a number of Northeast web companies since the business launched in 2008. Sharon wanted to establish a long term working partnership with a web company that would grow with the business and translate complex business goals into an achievable online strategy. Their previous dealings with web companies had failed to see them receive the service or end result they sought.

 

Coco Moon operate in a crowded sector and the services they offer are significantly different to existing 'dating' companies. With this in mind, one of the initial challenges was to simplify how Coco Moon described and articulated the unique selling points of the business.

 

Their services were, and continue to be, complex and key to their success and we had to find an approach that allowed Coco Moon to stand out from the crowd.

 

We were challenged with devising solutions that would fit the present business model whilst allowing working in parallel on the next stage of business development. Online payment processing was required and site communication needed to be in a style that was easily understood yet didn't lose any of the brands USP's.

From beginning to end we had a window of 8 weeks. Brief, scoping, design, programming, delivery, training and live - all had to be achieved. Coco Moon had scheduled a major TV and Radio advertising campaign and needed their website to be the primary point of contact for those making their initial enquiries.

Maintaining the profile of the Coco Moon brand was a critical factor along with the opportunity to use elements of the company logo to tie in other areas of the site. The need to create a visually welcoming home page for visitors that may be anxious of using an executive matchmaking service was also key. Our choice of a large image with navigation links that show brief details of what they lead to has proved extremely popular with visitors. The unusual yet distinctive approach to the home page creates a clean yet informative entry point that eases the visitor in to the wide range of services Coco Moon provide.

 

The 'clover' element within the main brand logo was then used in association with page buttons, headers and titles along with a simple, precise and easy to read column structure throughout.

 

Animated graphics were used to draw focus to the sections of the site intended for registered members as well as new visitors wishing to progress an application, leading the eye to them on each page without being overly distracting from reading page content.

In keeping with our belief that content management should be as simple yet powerful as possible we designed the Coco Moon CMS from scratch. They have the ability to control all elements of the non-secured sections of the site as well as the secure transactional based areas where membership, events, bookings and a full picture library are accomodated.

 

The image library in particular provides the client with a tool they can utilise at any point in the future with thumbnail views and large views of images, selection of them and attachment to an event or other area with a single click of a mouse button. If an event is held at a location on more than one occasion, the client can re-use images in the library extremely quickly with the only storage footprint being its original entry in the library.

 

 

Managing events for lots of people, taking bookings, promoting a venue and communicating with members was a priority. The use of a single module for event management, with tabulated views of future events, past events, members, places and pricing gives Coco Moon an incredibly fast method of keeping on top of what is a key administrative function. Views are sortable by all field types, from member names, event dates, registration dates and numbers of members attending - all the way through to alphabetical sorting for ease of reading.

 

The Members Area of Coco Club makes use of transparent effects being applied to images from the library so that an attractive background is applied to all events with an overlay of summary event details and the ability to drill down for full event detail. Booking needed to be easy, and it couldn't have been made simpler. The system design means a member only needs to select an event, click 'book', confirm they wish to reserve a place - and pay. They immediately receive confirmation of their booking by e-mail, the database adjusts the places remaining and even reminds the Coco Moon team when an event is nearing capacity.

 

SagePay was used for full payment integration allowing the client to monitor the completion of payments, process refunds if necessary and ensure that the customer has the peace of mind from a trusted payment provider.

 

Coco Moon visitors have an array of ways in which they can connect with the company. A standard yet validating contact form is supplemented by systems that provide services to register for a newsletter subscription or receive a complimentary report that is delivered to them within seconds of their details being processed. Furthermore, the report is presented in a printable format for ease of offline reading if required.

 

Positive reception of the Coco Moon site has been strong. So strong in fact that ClarityWEB have already received an order from another client for a site directly because of the impression the Coco Moon site left them with. They referenced the site in their contact with us and an order was placed for a large eCommerce solution within a month.

 

Results for Coco Moon have been excellent. They have risen from a position of receiving virtually no visitors online to thousands. Furthermore, the quality of visitors is exceptional with an average time on site of almost 5 minutes per visitor. Visitors also explore the site with an average user exploring every main menu item.

 

Sharon Kell, Managing Director of Coco Moon was kind enough to have the following to say of our work on this project.

 

"Finding a company who understood our business was a huge challenge for me. Our website as it stood looked good but it wasn't functional and hadn't evolved as the business had grown since launch.

Our immediate challenge was to get the site fit for purpose, initially for me to drive traffic to the site and then for the site to entice visitors so they eventually bought from us. So, in essence, the site didn't generate business therefore several areas needed to be reviewed and managed collectively to deliver the desired business result.

Chris and his team got to grips with the business very quickly and we set to work on formulating our plan. It was ambitious, it was complex and it was highly risky in terms of timescale.

Our new site went from concept to going live within an amazing 8 week timescale which is credit to the skill and commitment of Chris and the team. Performance wise the numbers speak for themselves. Our site generates thousands more hits than previously and our visitors stay on the site and contact us considerably more than previously. It is mission accomplished."