Underlined

Underlined

Contentful Development, Page Speed Optimization, Responsive Website Design & Development, Web Design, Web Development, Website Redesign Services, WordPress Development / E-Commerce, Publishing

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Underlined, a Penguin Random House company, connects young readers to books, authors, and peers in innovative ways, including video promotions, social media influencer partnerships, merchandise, events, and more. Launched in June 2017, Underlined has a total reach of more than 1.8 million consumers. Its most unique feature is its free writing community, which has more than 35,000 members. Penguin Random House is the world’s leading trade book publisher.

Transformation

Before
Underlined before
After
Underlined after
Technology used: WordPress

Objective

Underlined needed a website as vibrant as its audience. Books bring visitors to the website but Underlined wanted to create an engaging and welcome community for “Book Nerds” and writers to unite and stay awhile. With a website that has an extensive inventory, traffic, and an online store, site speed and user-friendliness on the frontend and backend topped must-haves for this project.

Approach

Harry Potter had spells for unlocking doors, making water out of air, fixing glasses, and healing broken bones.

Redesigning a website? Not so much.

Underlined, an online community for young adult bibliophiles and aspiring writers, craved a website that was more of a real-time book club. With so many book titles and authors, they needed a way to easily add and organize them, while also improving site speed.

The Brandtenders at Lounge Lizard Worldwide turned that website fantasy into a thriller!

Brandtenders built a custom WordPress plugin designed to connect to Underline’s custom API created by Penguin Random House. That provides leverage for dynamic pages to automatically update books as they come in and organize them by author, series, and International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs).

Updating books is now just as easy as discovering books.

The easy-to-navigate experience for consumers is a Book Nerd cultural experience. Finding books isn’t really just about finding books.

It’s about engaging in writing discussions, posting unique content, learning about events, shopping, and keeping up with book news.

The website design was crafted for young adults with elements and master guidelines from Penguin Random House.

Impact

By upgrading website speed, automating inventory, adding a branded  Shopify store, and creating a true community, the Brandtenders at Lounge Lizard finished its chapter with only one cliffhanger: How many more young adults will get excited about reading now that they have their own space?

Lounge Lizard is amazing! We can’t recommend them highly enough,” says an executive at Penguin Random House. “From initial project scoping through to development and delivery, these folks know web development and branding. They solve problems, period. Privileged to be working with them.”

Gallery

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Results
20K
Keywords ranked on Google
39K
Unique visitors
7%
Increase in branded traffic

TAP INTO LOUNGE LIZARD

Lounge Lizard Brandtenders and Marketing Mixologists always serve up custom concoctions. We mix a potent combination of brand story telling with a generous splash of creative juices and blend in technology-focused, customized solutions as a chaser.

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