Background and Objectives
We were approached by Hull KR to redevelop the main Hull KR website and Online TV platform. After working with other agencies, Hull KR found they had some major issues with their website, meaning they were unable to generate any money from the platform. Having worked with Hull KR previously (our relationship going back to 2003!), they knew our team could help.
Phase 1 – Research and Design
The general look and feel of the existing design were kept largely the same as the Hull KR team were happy and wanted to keep a clean aesthetic. We recreated the design in XD, including a mobile-optimised design from scratch, to allow an easier process for the development team.
During this process, our design team carried out research into other sports team’s websites to gather more information about general design and to ensure Hull KR’s website felt familiar and simple for users to navigate.
Phase 2 – Design
Throughout the design process, we proposed a few changes to better optimise the website including:
- Navigation – we changed the main style from a side pull-out menu to a more familiar and accessible top navigation bar positioned with megamenu.
- Homepage – we created a more standardised ‘sports’ style approach, with a main featured news/video article and sub articles.
- News – a ‘card’ style approach was used for the articles, allowing for greater flexibility for image selection and the ability to add teasers and advert space for marketing purposes.
- Fixtures and results – we scaled back the use of red, leaving the primary colour to be used on CTA buttons and the layout was optimised to make navigation easier.
Phase 3 – Development Part One
The website was quite outdated, with lots of WordPress plugins contributing to some slow performance. After looking into the issues, the team decided it was best to move from WordPress and WooCommerce to Next.js Sanity and Stripe, improving the speed and performance. Order processing and billing portals are offloaded so the website only has to deal with simple webhooks. As well as this, Stripe has the ability to maintain and restore compatibility with TV subscriptions from nearly a decade ago, reducing the administrative work for Hull KR.
The website is hosted at Vercel, which has managed cloud hosting and can scale with global edge routing and caching, contributing to faster performances worldwide.
Phase 3 – Development Part Two
The development team used a headless CMS from Sanity which is highly adaptable and efficient at creating custom types to meet site requirement, including custom blocks on pages.
Page speed improvements were some of the key focuses of the project. The team optimised image formats and sizes per device, resulting in very quick performance. Page to page navigation requires little work for the browser, resulting in quick page loads which is great for user experience and has benefits to Google’s perception of the website. Page speed, SEO and core web vitals are included in ongoing work with Hull KR to maintain and optimise the performance of the website.
"We are delighted with our mobile first, clean looking, new site. We’ve received positive reviews from our supporters and partners. The new content management system is so much more slicker than before. The new functionality we’ve built into the site allows us to get the more relevant information to supporters, quicker than ever."
Craig Franklin - Chief Operating Officer at Hull KR