WNBA launches redesigned app, website

Tech

The $75 million raised by the league last year paved the way for assembling an in-house digital team that will work with major partner Deloitte on the new products.

WNBA Digital

The WNBA has revamped its digital products ahead of the new season that begins Friday, rebuilding its app and website to update its offering to fans.

Renovated The WNBA app And wnba.com After a year and a half development period, they start today. The $75 million raised by the league last year paved the way for assembling an in-house digital team that will work with major partner Deloitte on the new products.

The two pillars of that support are human capital and digital transformation, said WNBA Chief Development Officer Collie Edison.

“That investment went toward turning these digital products into reality to support our narrative of making it easy to be a WNBA fan and reach fans where they are,” she said.

The previous version of the app had limitations, says WNBA director of digital products Devin Ward, such as confusing navigation and too much restricted content only available to fans with League Pass subscriptions.

“It’s been a continuous transformation over the last 18 months where we’ve rebuilt our products from the ground up,” said Ward, who was previously product manager for Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. “So I mean, we’ve really rebuilt the infrastructure of wnba.com. We’ve rebuilt the feeds, the accessibility, the SEO, the sitemap. We’ve built a beautiful, fresh, modern design foundation that balances the synergy between wnba.com and the mobile app, so that the fan doesn’t feel like two separate experiences. .

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Led by an all-female leadership team, the redesign is the result of feedback from focus groups, consideration of customer journeys and insights from competitive analysis. Visitors to the app’s new home page will follow social media-style temporary content across the top and vertical rows of videos. Below are the five most standard sports navigation buttons: Home, Games, Watch, Fixtures, and More.

“Our biggest goal is to make the WNBA app a one-stop shop for everything WNBA — not just games, not just League Pass, but everything around the league,” Ward said.

Two-time MVP Aja Wilson stars in a three-part series focusing on how she and her teammates are approaching their title defense season as the champion Las Vegas Aces. That will produce some original programming as well as short videos ranging from player fashion (Kicks and Fits) to WNBA city tours, interviews and highlights.

“Player and athlete storytelling is a huge pillar of our mission, and increasing the visibility of our athletes through the app was extremely important and thoughtful in its construction,” Edison said. “Our goal is to create a household name.”

The NBA released its next-generation app last fall with the help of technology partner Microsoft, while W used its Changemaker level partner, Deloitte. (NBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is also a former Deloitte CEO.) “They gave us the manpower to make this happen so quickly,” Ward credits. While the NBA and WNBA’s digital development timelines overlap, they remain largely parallel, but regularly share best practices.

The WNBA’s digital team took particular note of how successful the NBA app’s storytelling tools were, Ward said. W tried to replicate a Tiktok-style scrolling mechanism. “We want you to get lost in our content,” she added.

Many of the same partners are used in both digital ecosystems, such as WSC Sports and Greenfly. What the WNBA is releasing to the public today has many additional features that are already in the works, such as MVP — the minimum viable product. Among them are fantasy and gaming, personalization and integrated ticketing.

“Throughout the season, we will continue to iterate and release new features, building a truly scalable roadmap that will continue to evolve over the years. And that’s something the league has never had in the digital space,” Ward said, adding that making updates would be more effective and efficient with an in-house dev team.

“I always say, now that we’ve made the cake, adding sprinkles and sprinkles doesn’t ruin the cake, we start doing that,” she added. “If you had asked us that a year ago, we wouldn’t have been able to build on those things. And now we can do it in a more efficient and faster way.