The Challenge

Recast, a subscription-free, on-demand streaming platform needed a marketing website to build their brand awareness and drive publishers and users to their platform.

The Solution

Following a Recast re-brand, Kitty designed a sleek and engaging website to communicate Recast’s dynamic offering as a streaming platform. As a lead generation tool for Recast, the marketing website needed to persuade two distinct user groups to convert: Publishers to sign up for a channel and viewers to join. The website needed to cleverly communicate Recast’s offering, provide a sample of functionality on the streaming platform, and encourage conversion through sign-ups, both for viewers and publishers.  

Technical Requirements

For Recast, we implemented a headless WordPress solution. A headless solution was chosen due to its flexibility, and the distribution of content across various front-end platforms. We used WordPress as our CMS backend and integrated GraphQL for efficient content querying, ensuring that frontend applications can directly fetch required data. 

For the frontend, we used Next.js, a React-based framework. Its features, like automatic code splitting and hot code reloading, enhance performance and adaptability to content changes. 

We selected WP Engine for hosting due to its stability and the range of tools it provides. Furthermore, we developed a tool that facilitates content synchronisation through WordPress across staging and production environments. This ensures content consistency and provides the capability to rigorously test before deploying it live. 

Vercel was used for content previewing. Its serverless architecture ensures efficient resource usage, and its build caching reduces the time between content updates and previews. 

For deployment, we used a combination of AWS tools. When a webhook is triggered, an AWS Lambda function activates an EC2 instance. This instance, in coordination with GitHub Actions, manages the build as outlined in a YAML script. Once the build is complete, it’s committed to a GitHub repository. This repository, equipped with webhooks and GitHub Actions, handles rapid deployments and updates. 

Overall, Recast’s setup integrates key technologies to manage content, preview changes, and ensure efficient deployments. 

The Results

From 1st March to May compared to 1st June to 24th August, it’s important to note that the March-May period includes an extra month of data. During this comparison, we observed the following growth in metrics:

•  Total users increased by 28.3%.
• New users saw a surge of 31.3%.
• Sessions grew by 12.4%.
• Engaged sessions experienced a 20% rise.

Testimonial

“Our Recast team relied heavily on Kitty for full technical ability throughout this website build, and we are thrilled with the results. Deciding upon a headless build was an adventurous move, however, one which paid off in the long run.

Kitty went above and beyond to ensure that the website met all the requirements we were looking for. The results portray the quality of work completed, with a new user surge of 31.8%. We are excited about continuing our relationship with Kitty.”

If you are in need of a new website design or build, get in touch with us here to see how we can best work with you.