Super Dinosaur is growing franchise. It’s one of those rare titles with smart, sophisticated stories in a true all-ages format –introducing kids to comics while still appealing to older fans.
I was brought in with the CommonGround Creative team to produce the official website, which not only promotes the story but the Super Dinosaur branded Whamo sleds From the outset we knew that we wanted to bring the fun and visual excitement of the comic to the forefront, engaging users and offering a glimpse into the world of Super Dinosaur. We kept the design classic and simple, incorporating motion and imagery from the book throughout. Every page visually reflects the action, fun and high adventure of the comic. In order to build on this, our design and development teams incorporated animation on several screens – a little extra fun that adds to the experience. Users walk away with a really good idea what sort of stories are featured in the book.
The most important goal for a fledgling title is to build readership, so we wanted content to drive visitors to the book. With a more established title we might offer fans a more immersive experience, but our goal with Super Dinosaur was to generate just enough excitement to encourage visitors to download the first issue, which is provided for free.
Budget was a big factor with this site. Comic publishers don’t have infinitely deep pockets, and titles like these always have to start small. At CommonGround we strongly believe that you can have a great website without spending a fortune, and we worked with Skybound to create a dynamic, functional site that met their budgetary needs.
Our analytics from other Skybound sites showed how large a role mobile devices are playing amongst their customers. We explored both responsive and mobile solutions with the site, and given the desired user experience and budget it was determined that both the store and site were best suited for mobile versions. Although a relatively inexpensive, smaller site, users can access content and purchase items on their mobile devices. This increased accessibility resulted in considerably higher site traffic, as evidences by the analytics in the months following launch.
Most comic book titles don’t enjoy their own website, even the most popular and established titles in the industry. In conceiving, designing and developing superdinosaur.com, we enjoyed examining what the site should accomplish and then putting that into effect. While the site is no longer active, I have an archive available here.