UNIQ design

Combat Sports is only the 8 th facility of it’s kind in the entire country. In April 2004, Robert Blank, a veteran marketer and entrepreneur, had recognized the opportunity to open the first outdoor laser tag adventure company in New Jersey and thought imm ediately that in addition to his planned print, cable advertising, and direct mail initiative the web could provide a significant return on investment and help in the promotion and expansion of his business.

During our initial meeting with Robert, we brainstormed to help Robert establish what the goals of his website would be and how those goals could be met. At the end of our initial meeting we established the following goals for the new business’ website.

Emphasize outdoor laser tag as a fun, safe, parent approved activity.
Quickly alert visitors to upcoming events and activities.
Streamline the registration process at the laser tag facilities.
Provide comprehensive pricing, scheduling, and location information.
Give visitors a reason to continually visit the site.

To meet Robert’s objectives we came up with the following UNIQ ideas:

Robert’s analysis of the market showed that he could attract far more customers if he promoted the company as a safe, family fun activity. In theory it shouldn’t be do hard since laser tag, is a 100% non-contact sport, however since the sport is relatively new, many people confuse it with paintball, where plastics balls of paint are fired at over 300 feet per second.

We tackled this issue head on using colors, fonts, and imagery in the design schema which were soft on the eye and inviting to both men and women of all ages.

Using a customized HTML registration form, website visitors were able to pre-register for outdoor laser tag games and Robert was better able to estimate what type of turnout and what equipment he would need at each activity.

We gave Robert the ability to dynamically update events and special activities, right from his office, using a web-based calendar system that allowed him to add, edit, and delete events on the fly and have his changes published live on his small business website.

With a market demographic of 10-18 years old we knew his visitors were active participants on the web. We suggested an online photo gallery for his customers to share and chat over pictures taken at birthday parties, bachelor parties, and the corporate events being held at Combat Sports. The results were spectacular when traffic soared to over 24,000 page views in the month of June 2004 alone, just ten weeks after the site was launched.