Helping USA Rugby make upcoming events more visible
Overview
USA Rugby is the national governing body for the sport of rugby in America. Their website is to provide information for their members and fans, and serves as a platform for users to register membership or participate events.
They currently face the problem of the engagement of their Events-related pages. Our goal is to understand the behavior patterns of USA Rugby users within these pages, and increase the attendance of upcoming events. We used web analytics and heatmaps to evaluate their current website. After thorough research and analysis, our team discovered 3 main findings and generated the recommendations for their events page.
Time Period
Jan 2022 - Mar 2022
Our Team
Hao Ni, Steph Meltzer, Fariah Qasim, Yifan Wang
My Role
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Leading group preparation and planning
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Analyzing data and generating findings
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Presenting final report to the clients
Process
Clients kickoff meeting
Brainstorm research plan
Collect and analyse data
Develop recommendations
Present report
Methodology
Web Analytics is the collection, analysis and reporting of website data (audience, traffic sources, content, conversions) with the purpose of making business decisions.
What can we know?
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How popular is each page?
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Which page do they come from?
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How do they land on each page?
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What device do they use to visit?
Heatmaps visualize the volume of clicks or mouse movements. The brighter the area, the more popular it is.
Scrollmaps visualize how far most users are scrolling down a page. The most viewed parts of a page are presented in hot colors and the least popular parts in cold colors.
What can we know?
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Where are users clicking on each page?
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Where are users’ placing and move their mouse?
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How many users are scrolling down on each page?
What does current Events page look like?
What we want to know?
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How do users navigate to the events page?
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What information are users looking at before going to external event pages?
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How easily are users able to find recent events information?
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What devices do most users access the event pages with?
Finding 1
Events/Tickets page did not play an important role
Google Analytics (Feb 2021- Feb 2022)
The Events/Tickets page provides important National and Domestic event-related information. However, it lacks pageviews and ranks just #47 among all pages on the site.
Hotjar move map on homepage( Feb 2022)
Users tend to not directly click into Events within the top nav, so they are missing the opportunity to see the Events/Tickets page, which combines both Domestic and National events.
Recommendation
A new navigation for Events page
Before
After
Combine the "Events", "Domestic Events", and "National Events" into one page.
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We identified this opportunity to increase exposure to all the events.
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This will provide a more comprehensive calendar-like experience.
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We also recommend this new page would be titled ‘Upcoming Events’ in the navigation to be more consistent with the current page title.
Finding 2
Users feel confused and spend less time on Events/Tickets page
Google Analytics (Feb 2021- Feb 2022)
Users spend less than 50% below average time exploring the Events/Tickets page.
Hotjar click map on Events/Ticket page( Feb 2022)
Click map reveals that users are attempting to click on the event filters within Events/Tickets although many contain no results.
Screenshot of Events/Tickets page
Hotjar scroll map on Events/Ticket page( Feb 2022)
The Events/Tickets page presents events in a single column when accessed via desktop, therefore requiring additional time and effort to scroll down. Scroll map of this page also shows that users are not scrolling to the bottom, therefore missing an opportunity to discover all of the events.
Recommendation
Use filter tabs on Upcoming Events page
Before
After
Use filter tabs to allow users to sort between National and Community events.
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Providing an option to differentiate the 2 levels of events rather than the 12+ current metadata filters provides more efficient segmentation.
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There are only 15 total events, therefore filtering by metadata requires more effort than simply browsing.
Finding 3
Users have difficulty finding the important information
Hotjar move map on National Events page( Feb 2022)
Move Map results show that users are viewing the information on the event cards. When they click the ‘View Detail’ button, it takes them to a page full of text (Right image).
"Events Calendar"
Hotjar move map on National Events page( Feb 2022)
Users often access the Events Calendar link from the footer when they are on events-related page, but this link does not work. We think they want to find more specific information of the events.
Hotjar move map on National Events page - View Detail( Feb 2022)
On the View Detail page, users are browsing through the text. However many of them are missing the link that will take them to the tickets purchase page.
Recommendation
Redesign the Event Card to provide more information
Before
After
Redesign the Event card
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Provide more specific information related to the events
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Emphasize a button to buy tickets directly to increase event attendance
New Structure
How do we change the Events page?
Before
After
Clients' Feedback
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Our overall findings are interesting and helpful and touched on some points they didn't realize such as the issue in the navigation.
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Our recommendations were greatly appreciated by the client. They are very thoughtful and practical. In addition, they are easy to be implemented quickly on their website using WordPress.
What we should do next?
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We had an A/B testing plan for Recommendation 1. We are curious about whether the pageview would increase after changing the navigation. The next step of this project is to evaluate the results of our A/B testing, to see whether the results meet our hypothesis.
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Quantitative studies are usually based on indirect collection of data. Actually some of our findings are based on our assumptions. In order to figure out the reasons behind users' behavior, we should use qualitative studies such as interviews.
