PAC-12: REACHING & ENGAGING FANS
Challenge
Pac-12.com started as a static website mostly consisting of conference press releases. It then added broadcast games and schedules. How could we make it more attractive/useful to fans?
Solution
Find out from fans what mattered most. The three biggest opportunities were 1) pages centered on games/events 2) team and sport-level schedules 3) videos and livestreams.
Outcome
Event pages became the biggest driver of traffic from Google. We also increased live video viewership and time spent on site.
Identify traffic patterns and opportunities
The data analysis and research efforts that contributed to these insights:
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Existing traffic data and traffic patterns for website (mobile too)
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Traffic referrer patterns
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Cardsorting exercise around sports content to determine what are the most valuable "components" of the sports experience and how we should group those.
I led the creation of event pages, using our taxonomy to automate the presentation of event-related content. Once we did that, the data showed that collectively event pages (e.g. a USC vs Oregon football game) drew the most traffic, and was the most common first page a fan would land on. Most of that traffic came from Google searches, on phones. This peaked right before and during the events.
So we focused on continually upgrading the event pages to optimize for mobile web and feature live video, how to watch, setting alerts, etc. We also did this for more granular schedule pages (e.g. UCLA softball schedule.)
Strategy to leverage Google search
We knew Pac-12 pages weren't going to beat out ESPN for football scores or USCTrojans.com for player pages. But we often had the most video content of Pac-12 teams on a per game basis. So we had a shot at "winning" the SEO game for event pages.
For a year after launch we increased traffic from Google by 20%. Then Google integrated more event content within their search results. Our traffic dropped some, but not nearly as much as for other sports sites.
Concrete improvements to event template, schedule template, and live video screen
Event Template:
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Added How to Watch flow
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Added alerts for games and teams
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Increased paths to app and tv provider pages
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Prioritized content for highest traffic times (right before & during event)
Pac-12 Event Template Redesign.
Schedule Template:
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Beefed up the pre, during, and post game states of events listed to promote live viewership and watching postgame highlights.
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Also added alert options and promotional slots for related Pac-12 hosted games.
Live Video:
Live video included both Pac-12 Network televised games and events that were livestreamed by the universities themselves, e.g. a Stanford USC men's tennis match.
Because that livestream was the only place to watch that event, the average viewing lengths for these streams were 12-18 minutes. That meant we could utilize the real estate around the video player with alert sign-ups and ads, since the long avg viewing time meant more value for advertisers.