Netmums required a highly optimised, stable, and long-term solution for their high-traffic website. What started as a single project grew into a 12-year partnership and a lasting friendship.
Netmums needed a stable solution urgently and time was of the essence, as the frequent website outages were unsustainable for their members and caused a lot of frustration. The client was also highly concerned about security issues.
The key challenges we faced:
Anything recognised that a complete migration to a new platform would take time, estimating a nine-month development cycle.
However, Netmums couldn’t wait that long, so while work on the new platform began, efforts were also made to stabilise the existing one.
A future-proof digital experience:
The successful launch of Netmums was just the beginning. What started as a website project became a decade-long partnership between Anything and Netmums. By 2011, Netmums had grown to over 1 million active members, and with its stable and scalable platform, the site was sold to Aufeminin.
In the 2014 New Year Honours, Netmums founders Siobhan, Cathy, and Sally were awarded OBEs by the Queen for their services to families. Mark and Jono, co-founders of Anything, had the pleasure of celebrating this achievement with them.
Over the years, we’ve accomplished a lot with Netmums, but some standout achievements include the growth of their online forum, which sees over 230,000 new posts each month; the launch of Netmums Reviews, a space where mums review baby products for other mums; and the creation of SeeSaw, a family-friendly mobile app featuring over 140,000 local activities.
This journey has not only allowed us to showcase our expertise to new clients but also enabled us to collaborate with like-minded brands such as Netflix, Lego, Boots, and Aldi.
Netmums embodies what it means to be a high-traffic website, and our solution helped ensure its continued growth year after year.
In 2023, Netmums was acquired by Reworld Media, which brought its own technical platform into the mix. Anything played a crucial role in ensuring a smooth transition, assisting the Reworld team in migrating the website. This marked the end of a fantastic 12-year partnership that was instrumental in shaping Anything into the agency it is today.
Siobhan Freegard OBE
Purpose driven social entrepreneur. Founded Netmums, the UK’s 1st and leading family social network, acquired by Axel Springer. Founded Channelmum, the 1st video-led family influencer agency acquired by M&C Saatchi.
Netmums started as a concept; with the technology bootstrapped on. Enough to get basic proof of concept, but we realised quite quickly that ultimately, we needed the technology to be equal to the concept; to overdeliver to our audience and to be always ahead of our competitors. We went down a number of blind alleys and it wasn’t until I met Anything and their founders Jono and Marks that I found a team that could not just conceptualise what we were doing but they could see three steps further ahead, technically.
Not only did they build what we wanted but they built what we needed. And built in the future-proofing that enabled us to grow exponentially. We were always one step ahead of where we needed to be, which also meant meeting the audience demand before the audience knew what they needed.
With Anything on board we were able to keep our 3 key pillars of Audience, Content, Technology in alignment. This led to us being able to fully monitise and commercialise and ultimately successfully take the business through a robust due diligenc, leading to a successful sale, to the right acquirer, at the right time for the team.
In short, Anything enabled me to build my vision and to ensure, ultimately it was technically as well as commercially stable, viable and future proofed, allowing a successful acquisition by a much larger European company, when the time felt right for us.
Siobhan Freegard OBE, Netmums Founder
When we started the Netmums project, we never could have imagined it would last this long. It’s been an incredible journey, and we’re so proud of everything we’ve accomplished together.
Over the past 12 years, we’ve had the pleasure of working with amazing people, celebrating incredible milestones, and creating unforgettable memories.
Mark Holt Co-founder, Anything
5
million unique users per month
30
million page views per month
16
thousand new members each month
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