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This strategy is your way of taking your fans' needs, your commercial objectives and your organisation's vision and refining them so that every time your fans and stakeholders use your website, they have a positive and enjoyable experience.
This in turn will mean that they are likely to spend more time on your site, that they are likely to return to your site again, more likely to contribute positively to the site via social media and that they are more likely to speak highly of your site to other fans. All pretty positive things I think you'll agree.
But that theory is all fine and dandy. The challenge is turning that theory into practice, and this is where it is so easy to miss the mark. With the pace at which technology evolves, providing an engaging user experience is more of an ongoing commitment rather than something you focus on just during the build phase of a new site.
My title to this blog is a little misleading. I'm not saying that User Experience is a myth or a waste of time. Far from it. What I am saying is that creating the best user experience you can is a never-ending pursuit of a very elusive goal and just when you think you are getting close, the pot will fade and move.
We've found here at Sotic that there are five key pieces of advice to keep in mind when ensuring that the end user - your fans - are enjoying the best experience of your website:
1. Timing is everything
Do you understand when your fans are accessing your online platforms and what they are trying to do at that time? When it's match day or the tournament is live, fans don't want to go hunting around your site for the latest scores. Take the time to think about when and how your fans engage with you and...
2. Balance the fans and the business
Creating a powerful user experience and journey is not about trying to drive the fan to the online shop or to buy more tickets. Equally it's also not about purely providing interesting content with no mention of the special ticket promotion you are running next week. Any successful user experience and journey balances the
3. Location, location, location
Where are your fans when they want to engage with you and what type of device are they going to be using?
4. Behind the scenes
It is not just the front end of your website that provides an enjoyable user experience. Make sure that all your valuable digital assets that sit behind the site - your images, videos and copy for example - are thoroughly tagged. Then make it easy for your fans to find these assets. You will be amazed at how your site dwell time statistics improve when you allow your fans to find and stumble across rich content about the sport they love while on your site.
5. From little things, big things grow
Don't be fooled into assuming that you have to be deep into using "Big Data" to be getting things right. Yes, data is a very useful resource to help your analysis and inform your decisions. But more is not necessarily better. Start small by understanding how to use some key basic information about your fans and customers and then build from there when you are ready to add more complexity.