The ABC Kids portal was a number of years old and badly in need of a rebuild, but how do you update a website aimed at children under 6 for one of the most trusted brands in Australia?

The two big questions we faced were:

• What did our target audience, and their parents expect from the site
• How would children react to a site restructure – would they still be able to find the content they loved?

We surveyed 1,000 households around the country with children in the target 3 – 6 age group, then created a clickable prototype for hands-on testing with children and their parents before build commenced.

We were responsible for renegotiating online content rights for previously recorded shows, scoping and managing the creation of new content; and creating the ability for full episode content from ABC iView to embedded in a web site – a first for the ABC at the time.

In the first month after launch, the site saw visits increase by an average of 8,000 per day with minimal publicity, and a 150% increase in session times, with the new video player capturing most of the visits.

The ABC4Kids web site won the Best Children’s category at the 18th AIMIA Awards.