Saints Partners With Delete To Launch New Website
Southampton FC has launched its new club website in partnership with digital agency, Delete.
The Premier League club appointed Delete earlier this year and tasked the agency to transform the club’s digital presence and overhaul the main website, with the goal of creating a market leading experience for its fanbase.
Saints’ previous site was built on the Football League’s third party digital platform (FLI). Delete collaborated with the Saints marketing and media team to develop a digital transformation strategy which outlined the opportunity for the club to re-think it’s approach to digital across the board. The first project identified was the main club website, including a complete technology overhaul, with Sitecore chosen as the central platform to power the product and provide a single customer view across all channels.
The entire experience is built around the cycle of the team and their matches, with ‘Saints Live’ providing fans with a news hub bringing together a mix of editorial, social and video content in a single news stream. Mobile engagement was also a factor throughout the design with over 60% of users interacting through this device.
Tom Dougherty, partner and UX director, Delete commented: “The new Saints site was created with a ‘fan first’ philosophy and designed to build a closer relationship between the club and fans, by providing an unparalleled experience of their club. We looked deeply at football fan digital behaviour, content consumption patterns and the wide range of channels in the market offering football based content. We knew we had to create something unique and exclusive to hold fan interest.
“With a broadcast hub approach – the site delivers a high frequency of updates day in day out, exclusive content and live streaming across all devices, ensuring it becomes the only place to be for all things Saints! It’s exciting to help Southampton launch this first phase and continue to break new ground in this field.”
James Kennedy, head of marketing, Southampton FC added: “Our partnership with Delete has enabled us to realise our ambitions for offering a best in class digital experience to our fans. Our belief is that we should be measuring ourselves against, not just competing Premier League clubs, but with the world’s leading consumer brands’ and their digital presence. Delete’s passion for understanding both our brand and business objectives at a commercial level made them the perfect partner for this project. As online and multi-device experiences become increasingly important to our fans, it was important that we adapted to suit and provided a future proofed platform that can develop with us over time. We are looking forward to unveiling more things over the coming months.”
The new www.southamptonfc.com marks the first release of the digital transformation programme Saints are undertaking with new retail and ticketing platforms planned to follow in the near future.
