In this environment, it is vital to protect and promote the BLACKCAPS and New Zealand Cricket brands in order to capitalise on new opportunities, continue to develop the fan-base, and ensure ongoing financial growth.
New Zealand Cricket relies on the web as a key marketing and communications medium for both national and international audiences. They approached NV to create a new, contemporary site that was reflective of the brand. They had an existing, functioning website at the time, but it was a largely one-dimensional platform that didn’t do justice to the breadth and depth of the content they offered, and provided limited interaction with end-users and fans.
Their key requirements were: flexibility, speed, user-friendliness and stability. Creating a positive, unique experience for the end-user – typically cricket-mad fans who demand information quickly, accurately and ideally in fully animated, living colour – was a priority.
A key point of difference of the New Zealand Cricket website is its Live Scoring feature. The site is the only provider of live scoring ball by ball for all domestic games, and also provides live scoring for all international matches. It was essential in the redevelopment that NV create a very stable and secure platform that could cope with the huge volume of traffic during matches. Up to 15,000 fans visit the site at any given time for the live scoring statistics for as many as 5 matches a day.
Challenging? Yes. But NV tackled the combination of technical and design requirements as more of an adventure. We developed a phased strategy for this build, which we ultimately approached as five distinct sub-sites profiling the different aspects of New Zealand Cricket’s business. These were: international, domestic, grassroots, corporate communications and archives, which consists of a full historical record of all First Class and International statistics for New Zealand players dating back to the 1800’s.
To address the need for self-management and frequent content changes, we built a customised Content Management System. For the Live Scoring and Video Highlight areas, we drew on our existing in-house knowledge base to enhance the presentation and delivery to end-users. The Live Scoring platform is now more robust and is capable of handling the thousands of fans who rely on it. The video highlights area has become a new fan-favourite, and has enabled New Zealand Cricket to leverage their rights relationships with their core coverage supplier, Sky Sports, in a new and creative way.
What do the fans think? We smashed the targets for traffic increase, so we’re confident they approve. The site traffic on the former website for the 8-month period 1 November 07 to 30 June 08 was 3,385,122 page impressions. In the 4-month period of 1 October 09 to 27 January 09, the new site racked up 6,251,531 page impressions. This traffic figure does not even include Live Scoring visitors.
NV is looking forward to enhancing the interactivity and overall experience of visitors to the New Zealand Cricket site long-term. Our goal is to use the site as a platform to invite fans into the action and bring them closer to the sport and players they love. We confess a degree of self-interest here…we’re cricket fans too!