AIG Women's Open
The AIG Women’s Open was first established in 1976 and is one of five Major championships in women’s golf.
Live Scores, Event Support, Application Management
The AIG Women’s Open needed a facelift in its online presence. The online ecosystem of the client had to face a double, yet not simultaneous challenge – sustaining the impressive traffic generated by The Open Championship in July, while also preparing for the AIG Women’s Open in August. We chose to implement a multisite solution in Sitecore, which allowed us to manage content delivery, content management, and many other features across both of our sites from the same CMS.
AIG WOMEN’S OPEN
OVERVIEW
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The AIG Women’s Open needed to manage a rapidly growing audience and ensure seamless content delivery while establishing a unique brand identity.
Challenges
During the AIG Women’s Open, the audience size was projected to grow exponentially, with millions of unique users and billions of server requests expected. This surge in traffic posed a significant challenge in managing and delivering content efficiently.
Additionally, enhancing website performance, speeding up data delivery for various services, optimising images, and simplifying content management for easy updates by editors were essential.
Integrating multiple third-party services seamlessly and ensuring robust failover systems were in place to maintain uninterrupted user experiences was another challenge.
Implementing new features and a unique brand identity for the championship required a redesign of the user interface and overall experience.
Managing high traffic and data throughput efficiently during the event, along with extensive load testing, continuous monitoring, and rapid intervention capabilities, was crucial for ensuring platform stability and performance.
Solutions
We utilised individual machines powered by Amazon Web Services to separate content management from content delivery. This approach ensured that the platform could handle the high volume of traffic without compromising performance.
We chose Sitecore for its impressive flexibility to meet all business requirements. It allowed us to create a content and information architecture that best suited the AIG Women’s Open Championship, sustaining a solid structure and main functionalities without interruptions or errors.
We implemented serverless technology powered by Microsoft Azure Functions. This solution provided the necessary scalability and reliability, ensuring that third-party integrations worked smoothly and that the system could quickly recover in case of any service failures.
Our design team gave the championship a vibrant, unique identity with a strong, feminine touch, and a new logo that conveyed energy and power. This brand update was consistently applied across the website to enhance the user experience and accurately represent the championship.
We conducted extensive load testing and live result testing, established continuous monitoring protocols, and developed rapid intervention capabilities. This comprehensive strategy enabled us to anticipate and correct potential issues, ensuring that the platform remained stable and performed optimally throughout the event.
Design Integration
The design and overall experience received a brand update to give the championship its own unique identity.
The design and the overall experience had a brand update to give the championship its own unique identity.
Innovations
/ A
A new scoring platform integration
The scoring engine can integrate three new scoring providers for The AIG Women’s Open. We rewrote the code and adapted part of the integration done for The Open.
/ B
An integrated video experience
A communication channel built using video content was implemented, with features like auto-play being a highlight.
/ C
A new approach to cookie policy
One of the functions allows us to identify a user without an IP or other relevant data by randomly generating an ID for each user that accesses the website.
AIG WOMEN’S OPEN
PROJECT’S RESULTS
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Results
This project integrated multisite capabilities, a new scoring platform, enhanced video experiences, and a vibrant brand identity, advancing digital standards for the AIG Women’s Open.
This project not only supported the seamless execution of a major women’s golf championship but also set a new standard for managing large-scale sports events digitally.
• Multisite by Sitecore
Implemented a multisite in Sitecore to simultaneously sustain the AIG Women’s Open and The Open Championship websites.
• A New Scoring Platform Integration
Integrated a new scoring platform to deliver real-time, accurate scores seamlessly.
• An Integrated Video Experience
Enhanced the platform with an integrated video experience for live and on-demand content.
• Brand Identity Implementation
Implemented a vibrant new brand identity to enhance the overall visual appeal and user engagement of the AIG Women’s Open website.