Blogbrowsing

The challenge

Creating the first bloggers network in Romania, able to distribute traffic in the blogosphere, as well as sustain new media campaigns.

General Presentation

We were commissioned to develop a platform on which bloggers can distribute traffic to others through the help of a “peel-away” banner. All centralized in a stable platform.
This is the idea that got the project started. A simple idea turned into a fine project that united under one application most of the influential bloggers in the country.

The solution

Features
The application now runs on a server distributing ads in the network based on an algorhytm we’ve created, tested and tweaked.

Users can register (we did a nice little recaptcha implementation there), add their blogs to the network, add screenshots of the blog or other images that will be displayed on the “peel-away” banner, activate or deactivate their blog, see stats on how many times people have viewed their ads and how many times their ads have been displayed.

Bloggers registering here can also allow Blog Browsing to run commercial banners and monetize their traffic.
For those not having a predefined image we’ve developed an image editor that lets you create banner images on the fly. Users can change text, color, position and others. Once they’re done they can either use it or download it.

The admin panel allows the managers to edit profiles, block those blog that fail to comply with the terms and conditions, run campaigns for commercial clients, generate reports and many others.

Interactive design
We wanted to make sure our audience interacts with the product. We used a clean, two column design, with visible buttons, clear interaction patterns and bright yet pleasant colors.

The application is viewed in shades of blue, orange, green and dark mauve. We’ve implemented CSS styles for all used hyper markups so users and managers can freely add content (mainly on the blog) without the need for a specialized designer.

A defining design element is the static bar at the bottom we always keep visible (floating) for a faster access to important information.

We had a lot of success with the banners promoting the product (we’ve let bloggers embed them on their blog). They were both designed as buttons to help draw click through rate up, while maintaining the application’s visual identity.