The first question about adding web content is ‘does it fit mission?’
Big Fish Games Inc. did a boatload of research before rolling out a social networking feature on BigFishGames.com, its casual gaming web site. Striving to meet customer desires was important, but sticking to the web-only company’s business objective was paramount, says founder and CEO Paul Thelen.
When Big Fish decided to build My Game Space, a social networking forum where customers can construct their own web sites anonymously using fictitious names, the company learned that customers wanted a forum to exchange views on favorite games and socialize.
Designing the My Game Space section of BigFishGames.com began with the company’s marketing group, which contracted with an outside company to conduct research through focus groups. The marketing team gathered the focus group findings and presented them to product managers who also reviewed what competing online game companies were doing.
Thelen and his executive team, including the director of marketing and the president, reviewed the plan with an eye on ensuring that a key company goal was included: customers referring other shoppers. “Customers want a lot of interesting features, but we have to keep in sight what they do for the company,” Thelen says. “The business objective is to get other people to buy games.”
After approval, product managers passed the results along to web technology engineering teams. My Game Space technology was developed in-house and is built on MySQL open source database management software and uses the asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax, development technique for interactivity.
In addition to personalizing their My Game Space web site, registered members can interact with other online gamers, write reviews and build favorite game lists. BigFishGames.com offers more than 400 interactive and regular game titles and customers access online and downloadable games by subscription.
Big Fish Games is No. 271 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
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