In Pursuit of Fun, Disney Remakes Website

International Herald Tribune

Walt Disney, concerned that its main Web site is not entertaining enough, is moving once again to overhaul Disney.com.

It will be the second recent makeover for the company's marquee site, which is still the top Internet destination for children's entertainment but faces increasing competition from players like Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and WebKinz.

The changes, scheduled to take place over the next few months, will introduce more free video to the site (including full-length movies like "Finding Nemo"), more games and more things for visitors to do with their cellphones.

No longer will the site ask youngsters to navigate through categories like "Movies," "TV" and "Live Events." New options will include "Games," "Videos" and "Characters" and will emphasize how to find immediate entertainment.

It is also no accident that video search pages will look similar to those of YouTube. Disney designers worked to incorporate certain YouTube hallmarks, figuring that kids had grown accustomed to viewing Web video in that manner.

"It's a repositioning of our digital front door," said Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online.

The effort, code-named "Project Playground," is the second retrofitting of Disney.com in as many years, reflecting both the difficulty the media giant has encountered online and the whiplash- fast pace at which the medium is evolving.

The previous changes, a much more complex effort that first appeared in January 2007, were intended to capitalize more fully on hot franchises like "Hannah Montana" while making the site easier to navigate.

Those modifications, which included the addition of social networking capabilities, have been considered a success, increasing monthly unique visitors to Disney.com by about 40 percent, according to the Internet audience measurement company comScore Media Metrix. In May, Disney.com attracted about 28.4 million unique visitors, enough to rank as the No. 1 Web destination for children and family- oriented Web sites, albeit by a slim margin.

But the effort was too modest, particularly in the area of Web video, says Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group. "Our initial instincts were right," he said. "We just need to take it much further."

Of particular concern for Disney is how long the average visitor spends on its site. In May, the average user spent 44.9 minutes on Disney.com, according to comScore. In comparison, Nickelodeon's cluster of family and child-oriented sites kept May visitors busy for 79.8 minutes, mostly because of the game site Neopets.com.

With the changes, Disney is trying to position its Web site more as a place that entertains and less as one that exists to promote Disney wares. Video is the central component of the effort. Two weeks ago, Disney.com started streaming one free full-length movie a week and holding special events, like the streaming of "Camp Rock," the latest Disney Channel musical, this week. (Disney said that "Camp Rock" broke a company record for unique visitor traffic.)

Until now, the site has mostly offered video clips and episodes of television shows. But more original video is on the way. For instance, recent visitors to Disney.com saw a humorous video of the retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin clowning around with a Buzz Lightyear doll.

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Copyright 2012 by International Herald Tribune