Tales2Go presents thousands of audiobooks and stories via an Apple-based mobile application, to entertain, educate, and encourage young readers. Listening to audiobooks is great for young readers, struggling readers, and readers of all ages. Previously Tales2Go was geared toward parents, but when the company decided to refocus their audience on the educational market, we were approached to redesign their existing website to target administrators, educators, and media specialists, while not losing sight of the ultimate teacher—parents.

We structured the site around these core audiences and designed an elegant, easy-to-use with new emphasis on the resources and research schools were looking for when making the decision to acquire services like Tales2Go for use in classrooms. We put together a team carefully chosen for their educational experience, including our designer, who has a Masters in Educational Design from Stanford and our writer, who graduated from Harvard’s Masters in Education and Technology program.

Since Tales2Go has a vibrant presence on Facebook already, we incorporated that feed right on the home page, so that throughout the day, as updates are made on Facebook, those new links and resources are readily available on the website, too. Users are encouraged to “like” Tales2Go and share links with their friends and colleagues.

In addition to these core audiences, we wanted a way for potential users to find the titles, authors, storytellers, and publishers they needed. We did this by overhauling the interface for their Library Catalog, introducing the ability for users to find the titles they sought.

Also new to the redesign was a series of original Learning Resources. The resources focused on five key elements of literacy—comprehension, fluency, phonics, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary. These Resources will help teachers use Tales2Go in their regular curriculum planning—we even created some helpful, downloadable templates such as Venn diagrams, story maps, and other standard graphic organizers.

Tales2Go was already using PayPal to process some orders, but we enhanced the experience so that it felt (and looked) more like the overall Tales2Go website, added some helpful email notifications, and streamlined the purchase process. To make the website easy for the Tales2Go staff to keep updated, we created a custom Drupal 7 content management system. With this system, staff can make regular updates, maintain the library catalog, track purchases, and add new learning resources as they become available.

"The team was a delight to work with. Professional, skilled, creative and cost-effective, we got a first-rate website that blends creative flair with functionality that even a technically-challenged CEO can manage." William Weil, Co-Founder and CEO, Tales2Go