Mobile erotica company Cherrysauce has launched a beta version of its new wireless access portal, Wap.Cherrysauce.com, which the company says was designed in response to consumer feedback about navigation, content, and structure.
It is little wonder the company pays attention to consumer feedback: 2005 saw a 350-percent growth in revenues for the mobile erotica company, according to a Cherrysauce spokesperson.
The jump in revenues represents considerable growth in global reach in both the company’s business-to-business and direct-to-consumer channels—and it happened despite widespread skepticism within the industry about the viability of adult content on mobile and the widespread introduction of age verification procedures, the company says.
“There was some doubt within the mobile industry about erotica throughout 2005,” says Julia Dimambro, Cherrysauce’s managing director. “But these results show that consumers are just as interested in adult content on their mobile phones are they are online and on their TVs.”
After highlighting the benefits of “consumer-driven” mobile portals at numerous mobile conferences during 2005, Cherrysauce is leading by example. The company placed numerous feedback options on every page of its portal (which launched in October) in order to gauge how customers thought. The response and resulting re-design have changed the site dramatically, introducing a completely different navigational flow and new content deals that grew out of some difficult decisions about content levels.
“I didn’t expect the sheer volume of feedback we received,” says Dimambro. “The users are more open than I ever expected; they just needed an outlet! We have had several thousand comments about content preferences—which areas they think are cool, which areas users want to see improvement and expansion, and overall how much they are enjoying the site. We arrived at the conclusion that a re-design of the portal’s structure and content would give our consumers an even greater experience and encourage more pickup and return visits.”
One of the biggest overall changes to the portal was in the division of “adult” and “soft” content featured on Cherrysauce.
“In the first version of the portal we had an equal split of softer glamour content and plus-18 adult content,” Dimambro says, “but the softer content produced less than 20 percent of revenues. It doesn’t make commercial sense to invest as much time and resources in these areas if our customers are more interested in plus-18 adult content. The new version of Cherrysauce consequently has a much greater focus on areas such as ‘latest,’ ‘recommended,’ and ‘hardcore,’ and has created a smaller, clearly labeled ‘Babe Zone’ for the less graphic content.”
A new service incorporated in the re-launch is live, interactive video chat provided in partnership with U.K.-based company CC Media. The service allows chat hosts to be video-streamed to 2.5 and 3G phones, coupled with a text layer allowing users to text and see the hosts at the same time. CC Media’s service boasts more than 40,000 registered chat hosts, a customer satisfaction level of more than 90 percent, and an average annual, per-user spend of more than €500 ($598 USD), Dimambro says.
“I believe this is the killer app on mobile for 2006,” she notes. “It’s immersive, real, totally addictive, and exactly what mobile erotica was created for. We have a great partner in CC Media, because they really understand the mobile erotica customer and are dedicated to customer satisfaction and great service.”
One of the other main additions to the re-launch of wap.cherrysauce.com is a new branded portal: Oneofthelads.com. The online men’s magazine produces movies specifically for its Internet site. “Car Wash,” the first of the site’s mobile videos, depicts beautiful, hot girls washing a cool old Volkswagen Beetle. One of the Lads movie merchandise will be available on its Cherrysauce-hosted mobile site. The site can be accessed from both the OOTL website and the main Cherrysauce portal.
To ensure that its new “consumer-driven” momentum remains the focus, Cherrysauce has launched an on-site promotion calling for “saucy testers.”
“We are collating a small group of our real customers who will be able to purchase anything on the site for a penny, in exchange for giving us regular feedback. Doing it this way provides cost-effective testing and feedback, which is more valuable because it is objective and comes from paying customers,” says Dimambro. “So far we have testers from Europe, India, South Africa, Australia, and across North America, so it provides us with fantastic insight into erotic tastes and handset capabilities worldwide.”
Cherrysauce is showcasing its new portal at this year’s 3GSM World Congress show in Barcelona. For an appointment to meet with the company, call 34 627 422 498.
