Top 100 Website Adds Rich Media Content and Greater Interactivity through HTML5 and CSS3
INDIANAPOLIS – ChaCha, the popular free answers service that has delivered quick, accurate answers to nearly one billion questions, announced that it has launched a new ChaCha.com that is further focused on user experience and advertising engagement. Leveraging HTML5 and CSS3, ChaCha.com has added additional relevant, related images and videos to support questions and answers that come to ChaCha at an ever-growing rate of 2 million a day.
ChaCha.com is a Top 100 website, according to Quantcast, and attracts an average of more than 10 million unique users on average per month (comScore Sept ’10), more than doubling its audience in the past year.
“Our new site has a wonderful new look, delivering a rich ‘answers’ experience while enhancing user engagement for our brand marketers,” says Scott Jones, ChaCha’s CEO. “With this launch, we have also made a major move to HTML5 as it provides us with a highly flexible environment for videos and embedded content, making the site the best combination of search and content. HTML5 also enables us to provide more dynamic features and better mobile capabilities in the near future.”
ChaCha is taking a phased approach, deploying the launch with a new design that leverages standard HTML5 features. Additional functionality will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
User improvements to the new chacha.com site include:
– ChaCha’s Topics pages, where users can access whole pages of questions and answers on a single topic, will now feature highly-relevant images and videos.
– The site implements new “user ratings” so that visitors can see the very best answers regardless of what ChaCha platform received the questions. ChaCha answers are available via SMS text, MMS, mobile web, the traditional web, or social media networks.
– There is tighter integration and seamless connection with social network sites including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and others.
– There is added support for all new web browsers including the IE9 BETA.
Advertiser improvements to the new chacha.com site include:
– The new ChaCha.com has the ability to place advertisers on contextually relevant pages, making the ads better associate with the interesting and engaging content of the page.
– There are fewer ads on each page so there will be less competition for user attention on each page yielding greater visitor focus, and higher performance for the marketer.
– The new site will dynamically generate pages around the user’s interests and intent, making ChaCha.com an endemic website across all major categories.
– With the addition of HTML5, wait time to load a video will decrease, which will enhance ad performance. A recent study by MeFeedia shows that viewers are likely to stick around for HTML5 videos more than Adobe Flash and that 70 percent are less likely to abandon an HTML5 video than one delivered in Flash. MeFeedia also suggests that native HTML5 video players frequently have better performance than Flash on many platforms, including mobile devices and Mac- and Linux-based PCs.
“We’ve learned a great deal over the past two years about how to satisfy both mobile and online customers by focusing on engagement, speed and relevance,” concludes Mr. Jones. “Our new website takes user experience to a new level that continues to make ChaCha the #1 real-time answers service.”
ChaCha (http://www.chacha.com) answers who, what, when, where and why, and has emerged as the No. 1 way for advertisers and marketers to engage teens and young adults. Through its unique “ask-a-smart-friend” platform, ChaCha has answered nearly one billion questions since launch from more than 15 million unique users per month via SMS text (242-242™), online (http://www.chacha.com), Twitter (@chacha), Facebook app, iPhone app, Android app, and voice (1-800-2-ChaCha™). Working with major brands such as Paramount, AT&T, Palm, Johnson&Johnson, P&G, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Sonic, and presidential political campaigns, ChaCha.com is one of the fastest growing mobile and online publishers according to Nielsen, comScore, and Quantcast.
ChaCha was co-founded by proven innovator and entrepreneur Scott Jones and is funded by Bezos Expeditions; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS as well as Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; the Simon family; and Jack Gill, Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
