“Our online store has always been the envy of the industry,” Hot House Vice President Brent Smith said.
Smith is responsible for designing seven of the nine properties under the HotHouse.com umbrella, including the new Superstore 3.0.
“The Superstore 3.0 has just raised the bar even higher,” Smith said. “On the last version, I had too many chefs in the kitchen and had to compromise a lot of marketing to appease the team. This time around, I’ve been able to correct those problems, and the result is a really cool site with the strongest marketing and stickiness in the gay business.”
In addition to the new store area, Hot House has redesigned their front page to include a “spotlight” module. Users can also access the new Model Blog section, which features blogs, photos and video posts directly from the Men of Hot House exclusives.
Two new membership sites also have been launched, based on the Hot House Club Inferno Dungeon and Backroom areas that originally appeared on the Hot House flagship site. Members can access exclusive content, and the sites will be offered through the Hot House Cash affiliate program.
Another component of the redesign is that all features on the Hot House sites have been designed to be Mac-friendly. Scarborough told XBIZ that he decided to incorporate Mac compatibility after taking an online survey three years ago that indicated that more than 20 percent of visitors to the site use Macs.
“All HotHouse.com properties are 100% Mac friendly,” Smith added. “We have never understood how studios can be so arrogant as to ignore their Mac users. Hot House is a hip, artistic premium brand — characteristics many Mac users possess — and we’ve always been able to connect with that very important market segment.
“Hot House is 100% committed to our fans’ online user experience,” Smith said, “and maintaining our position as the world’s premiere gay studio site. We’ve got several other big site launches coming up in 2008 and plenty more in store — so to speak — for our customers.”
Earlier this month, Hot House founder Steven Scarborough was also recognized with the XBIZ GLBT Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008.
