Designing for a WordPress Solution

In early strategic discussions and collaboration with the Durham Sports Commission (DSC) team — even before being awarded the project — our team provided various options for content management systems.

Given the scope of the site experience our research centered around the options of Craft and WordPress, outlining the pros and cons of each approach. Ultimately we came to the collective decision to use WordPress, most notably for its ability to integrate and handle events and the DSC team’s comfort with the admin interface.

In early content strategy conversations with the Durham Sports Commission team, we identified the site needs of Event Owners, Durham Residents and Visitors, as well as Facility Managers. The result was an information architecture that favored clear verbiage over “marketing speak” or “sportsy” terms; one that was simple and clear for users from all groups.

Given the scope and timeline for the project our team worked with Durham Sports Commission to identify key focus areas to center our attention on improving. These user experience improvements manifested for site visitors in the form of a newly designed facilities page featuring images more prominently as well as a stylized Google maps integration. On the engineering side we were able to improve the experience of content editors by creating a solution for importing events from parent organization Discover Durham, and added efficiency that saved the DSC team time.