H Erd Yakingun v1.0.10

When it comes to web, OneFootball has always had a presence but not one with a specific purpose. For many years, the consumer web app was just there almost as a carbon copy of the apps due to their success. With a change of business strategy focusing more on content in 2017, it was clear that web could become a huge part OneFootball's traffic.

Why different this time?

As mentioned above, OneFootball decided to take a content driven approach. Of course, providing the latest and live scores is still a key feature, but producing our own content became the company direction. Afterall, the company possesses an excellent newsroom churning out articles as well as a top video team in-house, successfully producing content via YouTube and socials. Both these teams work tirelessly to produce original content which warranted an online vehicle.

We decided to angle the website toward providing news in a clear and simple way. For this reason we looked into making the website relatively minimal. We thought of it like a portfolio almost, keep it simple and let the articles and content stand out on a blank canvas. Basically, out with excessive green and cluttered content views, in with crisp, sharp pages.

Another decision that was taken was to hold off on advertising to begin with. Eventually we figured we could like the apps, incorporate space to sell on the website.

Some teething problems

I quite enjoy picking apart problems faced on the way, because I believe this is where you and your product grows the most. Keepin' it real so to speak. As mentioned in other case studies to do with OneFootball, user testing is a very prevelant activity amongst user research and the product team.

In the run up to releasing we had organised testing sessions for both the public and internally. As soon as we had a build on staging that we could pick through, our first hunch was that the approach to search from an implementation point of view was a bit weak. User testing actually made this pretty clear.

We had discovered some things needed to reflect the apps a little more than we thought. Search was a key indicator of that.

Users were finding it hard to find the information they care about, such as their club, Premier League scores etc. A nice caveat however was, people enjoyed the way we presented our native content. They found it clear, understandable and plentiful in terms of articles.

But what of the search? A few improvements such as extensive QA testing on the mobile and constant tweaks and improvements meant we were at least a little bit happy to go live. It's still a work in progress however with various experiments happening, including entry points to our most popular teams and clubs on the homepage being one of them.

The future?

The team at OneFootball are determined to make continuous improvements, increment by increment for the web. This includes the introduction of AMP, greater support for rich content and many improvements to the user experience.

The consumer web clearly has a long way to go still, but early numbers and engagement with users shows promising signs.

(Written in 2017, things may have changed!)