Responding To Input From Fans And Web Explorers, Otherworld Cottage Industries Is Streamlining Functionality On Its Websites

August 26, 2015 - Travis Edward Pike's original websites were geared to his personal fans and entertainment industry professionals with special interest in his three properties then in active development, "Morningstone," "Grumpuss,"and "Long-Grin." But all that changed when he launched Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2013, and transitioned from development to production, publication and marketing of his properties to consumers.

What Otherworld Cottage Industries learned from its consumers was that some had difficulty navigating through the web pages to find the product samples they sought. For example, most of Pike's music clips are posted on the Odd Tales and Wonders website, but clips from the Morningstone Music are posted on the Morningstone website. The Byzantine routing through six websites proved too much for some who only wished to see or listen to music, video clips, reviews, interviews, awards, and/or fan mail, usually posted with the subject to which they related, but some general enough to be posted on the Otherworld Cottage Industries or Travis Edward Pike websites. Otherworld's solution was to leave them where they were, but to create a "Production Office" page on each website that would cross link directly to all the items, posted anywhere in the Otherworld Cottage Industries universe, no matter where the consumer's link originates. As of now, those pages are all up and functioning.

Another visitor reported that she had no idea who the VIPs and industry professionals were, and became frustrated (or worse – bored), when personalities important enough to be named on the websites, eluded her search engine. Otherworld's solution, still being implemented at this time, is to go through all the websites and where VIPs are noted, create links to their online biographies. Many are posted in the IMDb (Internet Movie Database), but others are represented in resources dealing with their particular sport, music, or other related entertainment art.

With that in mind, Otherworld applied that same reasoning to other items posted on its websites. Deciding that it was not enough to say "Long-Grin" (Otherworld's red-backed,scaly, black-bellied, tusked, bat-winged dragon), is probably descended from a Baryonyx. The Baryonyx is a relatively new discovery, (January, 1983), so Otherworld posted a link to an excellent online article about that particular dinosaur, discovered in Surrey, England, and posted it at the top of our Baryonyx page. And when we came across a fascinating and entertaining video clip (complete with Beatles score), on Hercules, a real-life Liger (cross between a lion and a tiger), which might easily pass for the Grumpuss in our tale, we posted a link to it at the bottom of the Grumpuss YouTube video page.

It has since been reported that these changes are making a difference and the pages are much more user friendly. Otherworld Cottage Industries encourages visitors to its websites to tell us about their experience and what they think we might do to make their next visit more gratifying.