UI/UX
Design system
Art direction
Visual design
Digital guidelines
Prototyping
The Jockey Club is a giant in the world of British horse racing. They own and operate 16 of the most iconic race course across the country. They are responsible for some of horse racings most spectacular sporting occasions including The Grand National, Cheltenham Festival and The Investec Derby.
But for all the good that they do and the dramatic events they put on they had a problem. Their business and digital experience was completely disconnected. Each racecourse had its own website. Its own booking process. Its own events with little to no cross sell. The Jockey club wanted to create a better, more joined up experience for their customers.
The challenge was to take the 16 different racecourse and consolidate this into a single unified digital presence along with a completely redesigned ecommerce journey. Through the design solution we were also tasked with driving new revenues and increasing up-sell opportunities.
We designed and built a completely new .com which consolidated the content, events and booking journeys of the full set of racecourses. We met and exceeded the KPI’s and succeeded in raising ticket sales and driving new revenues for the business.
The design challenge involved consolidating the 16 Jockey club owned websites and combining them into a single, compelling and engaging digital hub. With this in mind we proposed a modular design system approach which would maximise efficiency for the client and allow a consistent engaging design. This would allow the client to maximise efficiency while providing them with a flexible design system that would suit their needs.
When we were developing the look and feel we opted for clean, structured layouts that made good use of typography and imagery. The Jockey Club events are all about being in the moment, and experiencing the thrill. So, with this in mind we wanted to ensure that this was effectively communicated by utilising their dramatic imagery in a bold and prominent manner.
As we developed the vision for the new digital hub we established much of the underlying structure of the modular system. The design was built out using Episerver technology which would allow the client to fully customise these modules in the back end. The challenge here was to make sure that we were covering off all of the businesses needs while still giving the client the platform to create variety between the different Racecourse venues.
One of the key aims of this project was to increase the number of trips customers took per year. Our data showed the average customer took between 1 to 2 trips per year. If they could simply encourage customers to attend one more event per year cumulatively this would make a real difference for their business. With this in mind we set out to show the breadth of what the Jockey club has to offer across its full range of consolidated venues.
Another of the major challenges associated with this project was to ensure that we could create enough variety for the individual racecourses while retaining the benefits of consolidating into a single digital hub. This meant making sure that the content (a major differentiator between venues) was really allowed to shine while retaining the overarching link to the parent brand.
The Jockey Club cater for a wide range of events. These range from multi day events and headliner music festivals to small weekly racing events. The design approach needed to allow for a gracefully degradable experience where modules could seamlessly be added and removed while retaining a strong experience for the user.
In the digital world design is rarely static. We wanted to ensure that motion and interaction was embedded as part of the approach as opposed to being merely an afterthought. Alongside the design work a full suite of interactions was worked up to accompany the UI kit enabling these to clearly be communicated to the development team.
Reflection is important. For this project it is clear that together with The Jockey Club we met and exceeded the core aims of this project. We created a completely new digital hub that increased revenues, created a better user experience and successfully consolidated their racecourses. The approach allowed us to provide the client with a flexible design system built on a sustainable, scalable CMS system.
