Six venues, with thousands of online viewers watching.
The US Sailing Association (US Sailing) in Portsmouth, Rhode Island is the national governing body for the sport of sailing, providing leadership for the sport in the US. The organization also provides scoring and race results for sailing events to media outlets.
US Sailing chose RDI to design, develop and produce a website for their 2008 Olympic Sailing Team Trials. The website needed to share the excitement and up-to-the-minute racing news and stats with friends, family and supporters world-wide. On the back end, US Sailing's reporters, judges and event administrators would need to login simultaneously from different locations to create new pages and post results and race information.
“We envisioned a high-traffic online community with web-based tools for reporters publishing photos, blogs and race results."
RDI did not simply build a website. We envisioned a high-traffic online community that included photo galleries and blogs, as well as a press-room section for publishing breaking news and results from six venues across North America. Since high-profile events like these provide organizations the opportunity to promote and increase membership, we used the event site to drive traffic back to US Sailing's mission and membership pages.
RDI designed a world-class online presence suited to wear the iconic seal of the Olympic Games, with a navigation system that would be intuitive for users of any skill level.
RDI deployed a custom content management system at the back-end so US Sailing reporters could log-in and publish news and race results in real-time. The web publishing system allowed US Sailing to reach magazines, TV and other media outlets instantly, and in a format easily used and maintained by their staff and reporters.
US Sailing shared the web publishing system with all media personnel greatly reducing the time, costs and staff needed to distribute event results and news. The website received 7,000 unique visits per day with each user browsing results and photos 15 minutes on average. Secondary links guided website visitors to US Sailing’s membership support pages and increased new member signups by 8-12% over the three months period.
