Uncrate Case Study
Movable Type Powers Growth at Uncrate
Customer Profile
Industry: Web Publishing
Unique Visitors: 600,000 per month
Uncrate is an interactive buyers’ guide for men who like to know about the latest and best products among gadgets, clothes, cars, personal care products, DVDs, and more. Built in Movable Type in 2005, Uncrate sought to expand beyond the typical buyers’ guides that included only gadgets and electronics. Movable Type powered the growth of Uncrate, expanding to more than 600,000 unique visitors a month and attracting national advertisers such as Gillette, Toyota, Microsoft, Intel and more. Uncrate recently upgraded to Movable Type 4, which includes community features, to facilitate interactivity among community members, streamline the registration process, and enable a customized “user page” to access gift lists, saved items for check out, and other interactions with the site.
“Movable Type was the hands-down winning solution providing an elegant blogging system that’s flexible, modifiable, and professional”
- Larry Angell, Founder and Chief Curator of Uncrate
The Challenge
Implement Publishing Platform to Fuel Growth: Like most entrepreneurs, founder Larry Angell needed a technology platform that would grow with his business but be easy to implement and maintain. “Movable Type was the hands-down winning solution providing an elegant blogging system that’s flexible, modifiable, and professional” says Angell. “The site needed to feel bigger than a personal blog. It had to have the look and feel of a professional web site if we were going to reach our business growth goals.”
Integrate Powerful Content Management: With just two people in the company, Uncrate also needed a solution that integrated with their work flow, so they could focus on site content and not the implementation of it. It had to be easy to implement and maintain since the two Uncrate employees were editors and writers with no IT background.
Leverage Expertise of Community: In 2009, the Uncrate growth strategy evolved; it now seeks to leverage the expertise of their social network, a large community of men. According to Angell, “Everyone’s an expert at something. Our mission is to tap into this expertise for the benefit of the community.” Uncrate needed a platform to enable community members to interact with each other through community blogs and forums, build user profiles, and improve registration. Once again, with only four non-technical employees, the solution needed to be easy to implement and maintain and integrate with the current work processes.
The Solution
The Movable Type Social Publishing Platform fueled Uncrate’s growth - from start-up to vibrant community - with its suite of social networking, blogging, and content management features. Uncrate is now one of the largest interactive buyers’ guides targeted exclusively to men. In just four years, Uncrate has grown from an idea to a profitable, interactive publishing site supported by both national advertisers and ecommerce revenue.
Uncrate built a professional, scalable website and blog that is flexible, yet easy to use and maintain. Just four Uncrate writers and editors have researched, created, and managed the content to attract more than 600,000 unique visitors a month using the Movable Type Social Publishing Platform. “Movable Type lets us spend more time looking for cool products vs. worrying about how we’re going to post content.” says Angell. The implementation of Movable Type took just one day. According to Larry Angell “I learned it on the fly. I’m a writer by background, so you don’t need a technology background to install and maintain Movable Type.”
When the Uncrate team upgraded their platform to Movable Type 4, they were able to facilitate interactivity among community members, streamline the registration process, and enable a customized “user page” to access gift lists, saved items for check out, and other interactions with the site.
With Movable Type, Uncrate members can be an integral, dynamic partner in creating content and value. Says Angell, “Now, with the interactive features of Movable Type, we can leverage the community expertise creating a vibrant dialog among experts and other community members.” The first new area of the site “Uncrate Answers” sponsored by Gillette, has surpassed expectations from both volume and quality of content benchmarks.
Looking Ahead
The Uncrate team has some exciting and aggressive plans for improving and expanding their site. All these expansion plans leverage the site’s social network which is powered by Movable Type. Movable Type is a proven, scalable, all-in-one solution that is an integral component to Uncrate’s growth strategy.
