During 2015 the 主播大秀 Sport App team have released a range of new features including iOS and Android Widgets plus match alerts for Cricket, Rugby Union and Rugby League. Executive Product Manager Justin Barritt now explains a range of new personalised features in the App, which are being rolled out from today.
A More Personal 主播大秀
At the beginning of 2015 Tony Hall set out the 主播大秀’s ambitions for serving audiences better in the internet age by creating ‘a more personal 主播大秀’. Across the 主播大秀 we are developing personalised services so that our audiences can tailor their experience based on their own unique interests.
We believe personalisation will help our sports fans to easily discover content on the teams and sports they love whenever they want, wherever they are. With this in mind, from today we are rolling out a new My Sport section in our iOS and Android 主播大秀 Sport App’s ahead of making this available on our responsive website in the coming months. A similar feature has recently been rolled out in iPlayer, called My Programmes; if you want to find out more.
Your Personalised Sport App
Over the last 12 months, 主播大秀 Sport Mobile users have increased by 33% and Tablet users by 25%. The 主播大秀 Sport App has been key to this growth with weekly reach increasing from 2M at the beginning of 2015 to just over 3M in recent weeks.
A key driver to this growth has been the expansion of our data alerts that can be personalised to your favourite sports and teams. With over 1.2M active users of our data alerts it was clear that there was a big appetite for personalised features in the Sport App. Our initial focus has been to develop these services in the app and then, with the benefit of audience feedback, evolve and extend these features to our website.
Use of the Sport App is growing rapidly so we know that the current design and functionality works well for the audience. Today we are releasing major underlying changes to the app - however where possible we have limited changes to the familiar navigation and design. The first change you will notice is an update to the Menu to support the launch of My Sport as follows:
1. 主播大秀iD Sign-in – To personalise the app with your favourite teams and sports you will need to sign-in. We require just your e-mail address and a password to get started.
2. My Sport – This is a link to your new personalised My Sport page – more on this below. Users that have added Quick Links will notice that these are now under the My Sport header. Upon signing-in these teams and sports will form your initial list of Topics.
3. Menu Edit Button – This has been moved down to the same row as My Sport, as editing the sports and teams in the Menu will now also curate your My Sport page
4. Sport links in All Sport – Our 7 most popular sports and the full A-Z are now in All Sport.
The new personalised menu for the 主播大秀 Sport App (iOS screen example)
Follow Teams, Sports and Competitions
Upon signing-in users can begin choosing the sports, teams and competitions to follow. We have over 300 topics to choose from with over 50 Sports and a wide range of Football, Cricket and Rugby teams. Users can also follow competitions like the Premier League and FA Cup. To edit your topics simply select the edit button in your Menu, then select ‘Add Topics’ to either search through the 300 topics or choose from a list of suggested topics.
Users can choose topics via the edit page (Android screen example)
My Sport
The new My Sport page is a new personalised page based on the topics that you have added to ‘My Topics’. At the top of the page are the ‘Most Recent’ items, which include the latest headlines and live events from each of the topics you have added. Below is the ‘Your Topics’ section where there will be 6 items for each of the topics you follow.
Users that follow Football teams will also be able to view the result of the last match along with the next upcoming fixture and when a match is taking place a new Live Tab will appear and the live scores will update dynamically. The team have integrated powerful new technologies that will enable millions of unique My Sport pages to be dynamically created and accessed each day.
Below is how the My Sport Page will look on a Tablet plus you can
My Sport pages are personalised based on the topics you select (iOS screen example)
Our wide coverage of sports make these new personalised experiences possible; however we will continue to curate the Sport 主播大秀page with the best stories and events from across the world of sport.
Access My Sport on your Smartphone or Tablet
By creating a 主播大秀iD account we are able to centrally store your personal list of topics against your iD. This means that by signing into the 主播大秀 Sport App on another Smartphone or Tablet, you will have the same list of topics to navigate to in your Menu and your personalised My Sport page.
Where Next?
These new personalised features and the My Sport page are the first step in our goal of creating ‘A more personal 主播大秀’ for our audience of sports fans. We have a lot of ideas of how we would like to evolve these new services, however I am really keen to hear your feedback on the new features and how we could evolve this further in future, so please do comment below.