Results and Impacts

The Scottish Government asked the Gate to develop an effective digital strategy to encourage parents to interact with their young children through Playing, Talking and Reading. Within months of the site going live, over 18,000 people joined the site. Now, it has the largest community of any Scottish Government website – 20,000. Recent stats showed that it attracted 71,000 unique visitors (who each view at least 6 pages) and in all, the site has received a total of 452,000 page impressions. Off-site statistics are impressive too. Our ECRM strategy has been successful in attracting new visitors and our “target emails’ have a good 7% click through rate.

The Challenge and Objectives

The Scottish Government’s Early Years strategy reflects a radical change in thinking. New evidence shows that the years between 0 and 3 in a child’s life are the most important in terms of physical and mental development – and that public intervention at this stage can have long-term positive effects. The challenge was to create an informative and interactive website that both parents and children could enjoy and engage with.

Our strategy

We wanted to deliver a website that was simple and easy to navigate, but which also gave vital advice and support to parents. Working with an early years educationist, we set about creating a user experience that was interactive and rewarding. We added baby karaoke, games and books, as well as a community section where people could discuss parenting issues and share pictures and videos. Our off-site activity was equally innovative, using a multi-channel engagement approach. It included a member E-CRM programme and E-Mail marketing activity to profiled demographic parent lists. We then created fun interactive widgets, as well as bright, simple online advertising and a PPC campaign.