Site of the Month: Fittopia

July’s ‘Site of the Month’ has been been awarded to Fittopia. Their site was built by SilverStripe Professional Partner, Impulse Digital, a talented agency based in Sydney, Australia. 

About Impulse Digital

Impulse Digital are a Sydney based white-label digital development resource who offer a “plug and play” tech solution for businesses who don’t have the resources in-house.

Impulse Digital remove the fluff out of technology, providing solutions that answer the most pressing business needs and speaking in a language that is clearly understood. The company is flexible and scalable, providing specialist talent for specific needs. When you work with Impulse Digital, you work with the people creating your project and not a bloated account management structure.

Project background

Fittopia, a fitness start-up in Australia, approached Impulse Digital with an idea to develop an online lifestyle platform that specialises in navigating everything worth knowing, seeing, booking and trialling in the health, fitness and lifestyle space.

The project would involve a number of phased releases including a location-based fitness finder, online media & PR hub, and the FitNews platform. With these phases in mind, the Impulse Digital team needed a CMS which was highly customisable and scalable.

Impulse’s solution

Fittopia was a highly complex project that allowed Impulse Digital to push the extendability of SilverStripe. Currently the platform is split into two sections, fittopia.com.au and mediahub.fittopia.com.au.

Fittopia.com.au

Fittopia is a consumer focused website which utilises Google’s API to help users find the best health and fitness companies near the user. The platform includes a login which allows businesses to sign up to claim and manage their business listing, including the branding, business contact details, review management and list information such as fitness class timetables. When a business signs up to the website, they have the option to join three different subscription tiers (gold, silver or bronze). Each subscription tier enables different features for the account holder on the website and all payments are taken via the online payment gateway, Stripe.

Screenshot of Fittopia's consumer facing platform

Mediahub.fittopia.com.au

The Fittopia Media Hub opens up a direct connection between businesses and media which was traditionally only available via a PR agency. It connects small businesses with large media outlets such as News.com.au and Pacific Magazines. Gold business members of the Fittopia Platform gain access to the Media Hub and are able to submit PR stories and respond to media call outs via the website.

The Media Hub includes a messaging interface which allows businesses and media to communicate directly without giving away the personal contact details of various media members. The platform enables media to request exclusive rights to a story and when accessed, the media article publicly records which media members have copied snippets from a story. This enables brands to have greater visibility of which publications they might be published in. It also allows media outlets to see which competitors may have already taken a story.

Media members can also distribute call outs to all business members in the platform via the messaging interface. For example, if the media are looking for experts on a particular topic, they can notify every business member on the Media Hub to request a quote on the topic. Business owners who have experience in the requested topic can then respond to the media directly.

Screenshot of Fittopia's Media Hub interface

Modules

• unclecheese/betterbuttons to create a more user friendly backend

• sheadawson/silverstripe-linkable to manage internal / external links on DataObjects

• silverstripe-australia/gridfieldextensions to add additional components to GridField for a better backend experience

• jonom/focuspoint to control image cropping in SilverStripe

• cosenary/instagram for Instagram API

• stripe/stripe-php  for Stripe API

• drewm/mailchimp-api for MailChimp API

• silverstripe/tagfield for CMS management of tagging

• silverstripe/multi-domain to enable sub-domains for Media Hub and fittopia.com.au while allowing content to be managed in one CMS installation
  
  

The results

Since the launch of Fittopia, the client now has over 1,000 businesses listed on the website. Paid subscriptions for business members are increasing as exposure of the Media Hub is increasing. There have also been a number of high profile media outlets sign up to the Media Hub platform.

Currently, Impulse Digital are working on fine-tuning the Fittopia MVP, working closely with the client to implement user feedback, and planning the next phase of the Fittopia platform.

Building a website or have something to feature?

If you are interested in working with Impulse Digital, please contact the team via the Impulse Digital website.

Interested in becoming a SilverStripe Partner? Check out the SilverStripe Partner Programme or email partners@silverstripe.com.