Sports event platform: Securing a 61% annual user base growth with smooth UI/UX
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Project overview
A myriad of Facebook groups and events. Endless scrolling and back-and-forth messaging. Crucial information gets lost in the sea of other posts and group chats. All of that is the reality of organizing or looking for a sports tournament for amateur clubs’ managers and members.
Our client, a startup based in Belgium, knew how tough it was for clubs to cut through the noise when organizing local or international sports events. That’s how the startup came up with Idemo.
Named after the Serbian for “Let’s go”, Idemo was conceived as a one-stop platform for creating and finding events organized by amateur sports clubs. Its built-in social features, including messaging, would foster community building, while accommodation booking would further facilitate participation in sports events.
However, the startup needed a progressive web app (PWA) with engagement-driving user flows and top-notch performance across devices and platforms to validate the idea.
Services
Challenges
Our client entrusted us with designing and developing a progressive web app (PWA) with three user roles: club admins, users, and guests. The interface had to remain responsive across devices while delivering smooth user experiences.
Another challenge involved designing and implementing activity management tools for amateur sports clubs. To flesh out our client’s vision, we had to conduct extensive user research that involved club managers across the European continent.
Our discovery phase unveiled the following needs and requirements:
Strategic business needs
01 Launch a responsive platform that enables amateur sports clubs to create local and international events and facilitates interactions between their members
02 Minimize development costs with a progressive web application (PWA) tech stack
03 Reach a conversion rate of at least 10% for sign-ups within the first year
04 Achieve a user engagement rate of at least 70%
05 Secure a user satisfaction rate of at least 80%
Technical requirements
01 Design a minimalistic UI/UX with clean layouts based on human-centered design principles
02 Develop a progressive web application (PWA) that remains responsive across all devices and platforms
03 Implement three user roles: club admin, user, and guest
04 Add built-in direct and group messaging and social features
05 Ensure a task success rate of at least 85%
06 Secure an application performance index (Apdex) score of at least 80
07 Achieve a system usability scale (SUS) score of at least 75
We’ll help drive engagement with powerful social features packaged in an intuitive interface with frictionless user flows.
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Solutions
Before diving into creating wireframes and prototypes, we conducted exhaustive user research that allowed us to understand users’ expectations and pain points. We paid extra attention to club admins’ approach to and challenges in managing activities, which informed the toolkit we designed to streamline those processes.
Based on our research and iterative improvement, the platform’s UI/UX design had a 92% task success rate and an 88 SUS score. We also minimized the time spent on tasks, reducing it by an average of 21% throughout iterations.
After thorough testing, our client received a responsive progressive web app (PWA) that looks outstanding and works smoothly on any device. The app supports three user roles (club admin, user, and guest), with key features including:
- Event creation and management
- Sign-up, sign-in, and user profile management
- Club pages with events, posts, and galleries
- Built-in messaging for direct messages and group chats
- Accommodation booking
- User feed and social features (commenting, joining/following clubs, etc.)
Using a single codebase across platforms allowed our client to launch the platform while minimizing upfront development costs. At the same time, the app shows consistently high performance, securing an 89 Apdex score.
Sign-up and user profiles
The platform welcomes users with a sign-up/sign-in screen, allowing them to join as club admins or registered users or browse events as guests. We ensured the sign-up was smooth and fast with a simple form and third-party sign-in options. As a result, the conversion rate for sign-ups reached 14%.
User profiles are at the heart of driving the platform’s social features. In line with user expectations, we added the photo upload for profile pictures and ensured user profiles were easy to update. Account management was also made frictionless, with the time on task for associated user flows reduced by 27% throughout design iterations.
Club pages
Before club admins can create events, they need to create a page for their club. This page powers community engagement with reviews, posts, and a photo gallery — and, of course, upcoming events put front and center on the club page. Users can easily join or follow a club, just like on any other social media platform.
We designed these social features to be instantly recognizable and, therefore, intuitive. This drove engagement on the platform, allowing it to secure an 81% engagement rate among early users.
Sports events
With Idemo, club admins can create events and invite other clubs to join them. We made creating an event as easy as possible with a simple form validating information, supporting autofilling, and containing both required and optional fields.
The event page contains the description, location, dates, and pricing. Users can comment on events, send participation requests, and share and save events they’re interested in.
Our user flow optimizations for event creation resulted in a 92% task success rate for the corresponding processes. Event browsing and commenting, in turn, were met positively by early users, contributing to an 87% user satisfaction score.
Built-in messaging
To foster social interactions, Idemo also offers a full range of messaging features with support for both direct messaging and group chats. So, users can chat with other club members or admins, be it to discuss an upcoming event or pose questions about the club itself.
We designed the interface for the built-in messenger, considering user expectations and workflow conventions. At the same time, we believed that the messenger could be used by people with varying digital skill levels. This enabled us to achieve a 95% task success rate for associated processes.
Accommodation booking
As our client’s research showed, sports event participants often struggle with finding accommodation. With Idemo, however, club admins and members don’t have to spend hours looking for the best offer possible.
The platform displays available accommodation options offered by the event’s organizers right on the event’s page. Therefore, booking is a matter of a couple of clicks. This removes a key pain point for users, especially where international events are involved.
Feed and search
Once logged in, registered users can browse a feed that showcases the latest posts, events, and other activities of the clubs they’ve joined or followed. Thanks to this feed, users can stay on top of the latest updates of their clubs, along with new events. This drives user engagement even further, increasing the average session duration in the process.
To help users find their next sports event, we implemented a semantic search with a location filter. During the final rounds of testing, users praised this streamlined search for its simplicity and intuitiveness. Search results can also be narrowed down with filters for the event type, dates, category, and more.
Tech stack
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Impact
Idemo’s responsive, fast, and convenient sports event platform with clean layouts and streamlined information architecture benefited from:
We can deliver a progressive web app that showcases your solution’s value while ensuring responsiveness and high performance.
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