Sorta Stupid
Sorta Stupid is a growing content creation brand reacting to movies, TV shows, and more across YouTube, Patreon, and audio platforms. To reach its goal of 500k subscribers by the end of 2025, sortastupid.net needed to adapt — motivating the brand to partner with a YouTube marketing agency.
Role
- Website Audit
- Website Design
- Website Development
Industry
- Entertainment
Challenge
YouTube and Patreon users are accustomed to an experience they can rely on. They’re familiar with these platforms and their associated features, such as the navigation and the comment section. Familiarity reduces cognitive load, helping users enjoy content easily— but what happens when you ask this audience to consume content on a dedicated website instead?
Sorta Stupid aimed to replicate YouTube’s user experience and centralize both free and gated content, including gaming videos, reactions, podcasts and webcomics. The channel enlisted Paradigm to tap into user intuition, implement website integrations and facilitate engagement.
Website Audit
Our partnership began with establishing a baseline for performance. We sifted through sortastupid.net’s metrics, identifying pain points in the user experience as well as areas for improvement. As the channel’s YouTube marketing agency, we found an opportunity to boost search engine rankings and engagement through strategic content creation, improved site structures and accessibility measures.
Website Design
Our design team aimed to use visuals to enhance user engagement and streamline the browsing experience. We leaned into the playful aspect of the brand, utilizing gradients alongside characters from their webcomic, “Billy Ends the World.”
However, content availability and hierarchy were paramount to this user interface design. As such, all pages were crafted in adherence with Google’s Material Design and the YouTube playbook — resulting in a familiar yet usable, accessible and practical look.
Website Development
Sorta Stupid hoped to augment its website to make content access and direct communication as seamless as possible.
However, the brand faced one main hurdle: their audience members had different subscriptions associated with Patreon and YouTube. To ensure membership-appropriate access, our developers needed to centralize log-ins for each platform on the Sorta Stupid website.
Patreon offered a straightforward account plug-in — but YouTube required more elbow grease. Channels could only unlock an Application Programming Interface (API) endpoint via a YouTube representative.
Paradigm guided Sorta Stupid through regular communications with the YouTube administrative team. Once we got the platform’s seal of approval, our developers built a custom plug-in aligned with its compliance recommendations.
By the end, our team coordinated multiple website integrations and applications on sortastupid.net that would:
- Display upcoming content and events.
- Enable content filters.
- Automate email communications.
- Facilitate fan art submissions.
- Verify user identity via seamless third-party logins.
- Unlock or restrict content based on third-party membership tiers.
Analytics
Though the channel used YouTube views to gauge popularity, we realized that the metrics may not align with website views. To refine how they pulled website data, our team implemented Google Analytics 4.
To help the channel make informed content decisions, we began tracking several key performance indicators, including:
- Click-Through Rates
- Watch Times
- Device Usage
- Demographics
- Recommendations Journey
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