The Challenge

Cricket Ireland had not had a website upgrade or refresh since 2011, let a lone a whole new design and build. As mentioned by Craig Easdown, Media & Communications Manager, on his LinkedIn post that launched the site:

When I started at Cricket Ireland in January 2018 – six years ago this month – the website in situ already looked dated. But it didn’t just ‘look’ dated, it ‘was’ dated. It was not mobile responsive, had no search functionality, didn’t pass accessibility standards, had an obsolete, end-of-life CMS, and when it came to “seamlessly integrating third-party features…please move along, nothing to see here.”

The Solution

We worked with Cricket Ireland on turning their ideas into international level design. A look-and-feel that was more on brand, and an approach to content that was user-led, rather than a website that mimicked the internal structures of the organisation.

We approached the design with a mobile-first philosophy, as the current traffic matched the sports industry standard of +80% of visits using mobile devices. Quick access to priority information on mobile was essentail.

A key message from Cricket Ireland was “The website had to be flexibly designed and the architecture stylised enough to allow for future change.” We kept this in mind during all have of design and rollout an liaised with their technical partner ITW to ensure the code matched this need also.

To quote Craig again:

“A project like this teaches you a lot about yourself, about others and about how fast-paced things in the digital world can be.

And a website is never ‘finished’. Never.

But a new era has begun. And a new year has come. A new year of cricket awaits.”