The Vision
United Marketing Group (UMG) is a direct marketer of affinity merchandise and membership-based services. They needed to revamp their old website to achieve 2 goals:

1) Make it easier for site visitors to find information and sign up for services, and
2) Simplify the updating process so a non-technical user could quickly implement changes.

The Product

paidContent.org has a good overview of ESPN's current iPhone offerings and strategy around using free apps to drive paid adopters.

Key take-aways:

Tech-savvy startups have the potential for rapid growth with relatively little investment of capital or labor. Identifying a niche market to focus on rather than a broad “everyone is a prospect” approach and applying that technology to address it can yield serious revenue rewards.

With the impending launch of the 2.0 OS for the iPhone allowing third parties to build iPhone applications, now is the ideal time to be rolling out an extension of your existing web system for iPhone users. I’m not talking about a different web version but a truly native app that links to your web system.

There is a huge amount of market hype already and many information hungry users and enthusiasts looking for that new ‘mobile’ application. It may have existed on the web for years, but putting a dedicated version in a user’s pocket takes things to a new level.