Carnaby Street became an internationally recognised destination for youth fashion and culture in the 1960s and today the link to fashion is complemented by a wide range of bars and restaurants throughout the village making Carnaby Street a London landmark and a Œmust visit‚ area for visitors to London

As with all websites, time dictates the need to freshen up and review their requirements and functionality. Over the last few years the Carnaby Village has expanded and matured and Shaftesbury plc owner of the village asked Activate to re-design the site and bring it up to date and allow the site to provide clear and effective communication with its audience.

The Brief

• Create a concise, clear and effective message about Carnaby Street as a destination
• Provide simple and effective CMS, allowing Shaftesbury to keep the site current and fresh
• Promote Kingly Court shopping area as part Carnaby Street experience
• Build and interactive and informational graphical display map of the village
•  Increase the number of sign-ups for ŒFriends of Carnaby‚ opt-in newsletter
•  Deploy an easy to use and effective Newsletter System to communicate with multiple lists of contacts
•  Increase interaction with the target audience

Activate Solution

The initial thrust of this project was to develop the all important key message about what Carnaby street, the destination, is all about. We worked with both Shaftesbury and their PR agency Sister PR HYPERLINK "http://www.sister-pr.com"www.sister-pr.com to both develop the message, and the look and feel to best convey the message.

Once the message and the design were agreed, we then set about building the site around our core CMS system. In this build, we focused on how we could both increase interactivity, and increase Newsletter sign-ups. Activate built the site using the latest  best practices for W3c compliance and search engine optimization.

Finally, we designed and developed a powerful interactive map system which gives a user the ability to explore the Carnaby and kingly Court area. This mapping system provides and graphical overhead view, with rollover highlights for each property. The user can also and easy to use directory specific types of stores, for example: ladies wear , restaurants, etc.

In building the new Carnaby site, Activate Media used the following core software:

• Activate CMS that allows full control of all aspects of the website
• Activate Newsletter system
• Activate Image Gallery
• Activate Blog system

RESULTS

• Site Traffic has increased by 250% within 9 months
• Registration of Friends of Carnaby is up over 300%
• Site is updated on a daily basis by the client which keeps it fresh, and clients coming back