Fishing Tackle Retailer was one of the first media sites to come into the Potato Family.
In 2014, we helped deliver a revolutionary website for the leading voice of business news in the American fishing industry. The site was a pioneer in the industry—one of the first to feature a fully responsive design, integrated native advertising and an image rich experience. Readers compared the update to transitioning from a Ford to a Ferrari, and the new website quickly grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of readers per year.
But even Ferrari’s need a tune-up after a few years on the road. And when the landscape of content consumption shifted away from homepages and image galleries towards video and social media delivery, it was time to give FTR a turbo boost.
Metal Potato teamed with FTR to deliver an all-new media website that rivals media giants like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal.
THE SOLUTION
Fishing Tackle Retailer needed a website that continued to deliver native advertising, but also captured users from social media and increased engagement. Rather than clicking on one story and being directed to a homepage, we created an infinitely-scrollable newsfeed for FTR. While a user reads one story, another is quickly loaded to allow readers to theoretically read forever without having to click on a single homepage.
FTR editors asked for a less-is-more approach to the layout, which meant lots of white space, and integrated advertising that supports HTML5 ads, in-depth analytics and custom placement within the content of stories.
We’re proud to say we’ve delivered just that for them—all in a package that’s not just one of the most beautiful news websites in the fishing industry, but one of the most fluid designs in all of online media, and built in just 10 days.
The team went above and beyond during our new site launch. True to their word, Metal Potato delivered a cutting-edge site on time, even when that involved volunteering to cut a holiday night short to do so.
Joe Sills