CityLeague
Bringing clarity to a rec sports league’s online presence
Overview
CityLeague Sports offers adult ski/snowboard race leagues in the winter and golf leagues in the summer. The website has 3 information & news focused subsites. Other digital communication channels include multiple social media accounts (Facebook being prioritized), a newsletter, and email notifications.
As a long time CityLeague race team captain and frequent user I wanted to focus on improving the website experience for racers while adding value for the owners.
Existing site (Oct. 2020)
Who were the users and what were their goals?
I met with the league owners, interviewed 6 current racers and 2 prospective racers to gather insights and ultimately create a concise list of objectives for the redesign.
More user insights
- Insight 1
Results, notifications, and start-list are critical in the current primary user flow.
- Implication
This information must be visually prominent & readily accessible.
- Insight 2
Most users rely on tools outside of the website to obtain CityLeague-related info.
- Implication
There is potential to capture traffic drawn to other tools by making the website a single source of truth.
- Insight 3
The “dated,” “retro,” or “old school” experience & feeling of the site deterred most users from frequenting the site.
- Implication
A look&feel/experiential/ navigational refresh could encourage more use while reflecting the contemporary direction of the league.
- Insight 4
Race cancellations, urgent updates, and (secondarily) weather conditions is critical info needed on race night.
- Implication
Explore ways to add, amplify, or prioritize critical information in the design.
- Insight 5
The information architecture of the site does not fail entirely but does not provide a smooth user experience.
- Implication
Hierarchy, organization, and navigation needs to be tested in the new prototype in hopes of an improved experience.
- Insight 6
The current site is perceived to be targeting only existing users despite business goal of new team/racer growth.
- Implication
Amplify new user info to align with business goals without compromising existing user’s information priority.
More than just a face lift...
In order to improve navigation I needed to wrap my head around the existing information architecture so I:
• Analyzed the existing information architecture
• Re-prioritized info hierarchy based on user research
• Condensed & grouped existing information
• Created personas to ground the proposed flows
• Created two user flows (new & existing racers)
The messy background exercises led towards a clean and simplified organization and ultimately towards my decision to use a mega menu (menu organization shown here).
During my IA analysis I discovered an opportunity for correction and clarity in the brand architecture.
Founded in 1984 CityLeague originally only offered adult ski racing. Hence the long standing CityLeague name association with the adult ski/snowboarding racing league.
Current offerings include adult ski racing, golf leagues, & kids ski racing which are loosely considered sub-brands under CityLeague Sports.
Existing Brand Architecture
Headers shown are the existing website logos (other logos exist on social media and printed items)
Proposed Brand Architecture
I added organizational clarity and brand unification by creating distinct identities that share DNA.
Organizing content to achieve business & user goals
I’ve found that framing design explanations in the context of goals helps clients quickly grasp concepts. The goals acted as solutions to user pain points, careabouts, or insights established during interviews.
A quick note from early user testing
I wanted to nail down the prospective racer (new user) flow during wireframing. By doing early narrow focus user tests I was able to clean up the flow before moving into higher fidelity.
Finding:
Users can be distracted by or completely diverted when provided with a branch off of the intended flow.
Quick access & clear wayfinding
The business organization needed clarity, see brand architecture section. Creating the CityLeague Sports landing page with clear separation of offerings helped users parse and navigate to relevant information
Current racers needed quick access to a large amount of information, the mega menu allowed users to quickly scan and target a destination.
The new racer/start-a-team flow included a sequence of digestible pages within a section helping to break down complexity and a perceived entry barrier.
Refining further and prioritizing an intuitive experience
When tasked with registering a return team, most users looked in the mega menu for the info. Since registering was not available in the menu they immediately started scanning the home page and quickly located the “Register for 2021” paragraph.
Why did users act that way?
Not including registration in the mega menu was a conscious choice on my part since it is a seasonal, one-time per year function.
However, users tended to treat the mega menu as a mini site-map, a catch all for everything important they sought out. The owners also expressed that registration in general was a critical piece of their current site before the season starts. These two influences made it a no-brainer to add registration to the mega menu.
Final thoughts
Despite being a long-time participant of the league with intimate knowledge of the subject matter there was still valuable insights to be gained from user research and testing my assumptions & designs.