ENTERTAINMENT, EVENTS, SPORTS
The GAA is Ireland’s leading sporting and cultural organisation with membership approaching one million people. In 2015, Strata3 successfully won the tender to redesign www.crokepark.ie on the Kentico Enterprise Marketing Platform.
Background.
Croke Park is headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Ireland’s largest sporting organisation, and attracts over 1.5 million visitors annually. With a capacity of 82,300, the stadium accommodates all types of events, from Gaelic games to concerts, meetings to trade shows to gala dinners. Croke Park is also home to the GAA Museum, Stadium Tour and Etihad Skyline Tour.
Goals.
The primary objective was to create a digital experience that would engage Croke Park’s diverse audiences and improve the Croke Park experience online.
The redeveloped site needed to support the following key requirements:
- Information: to communicate information on all public and private events at Croke Park, including how to get there, parking and on-site facilities
- Lead Generation: to promote and drive enquiries and bookings for Croke Park’s meetings and events facilities
- Visitor Attractions: to promote and drive online bookings for Croke Park GAA Museum Stadium Tours and Skyline Tours, and to communicate key events and exhibitions in the GAA Museum
- Private and Corporate Membership: to advertise and drive sales for Croke Park’s Premium, Suite and Hospitality offerings
- PR and Brand Marketing: to share news and information on all aspects of stadium business and operations
- Online Shop: to purchase archive prints and merchandise from the home of Gaelic Games
The main requirement was to meet the implicit needs of a range of users, including fans, members, visitors, corporate, tourists and prospects. The project included redesigning and redeploying multiple microsites and landing pages onto a single platform.
Challenges.
The current site needed to be redeveloped to ensure cross-device platform accessibility and deliver a best-in-class online experience for fans, visitors and prospects in order to drive engagement and growth across the business.
Solution.
The website has multiple user types, including GAA fans, concert goers, premium and corporate members, members and events attendees, as well as hospitality, meetings and events prospects. With the help of vital input from the team at Croke Park, Strata3 researched the user’s journey, explored interaction concepts and refined the visual design before deploying it onto the Kentico EMS and migrating all new content for the new Croke Park website.
Strata3 worked closely with Croke Park to ensure that they populated the new site with user-focussed content, enhanced by excellent photography. Key functionality to support event attendance was improved with Google mapping and content to locate Croke Park.
Continuously within the top 5 attractions in Dublin on Tripadvisor, the site is responsible for driving online bookings and group bookings to the stadium visitor attractions— GAA Museum, Stadium Tours and Etihad Skyline tours—as well as communicating special events and exhibitions.
The website is a lead generation tool to drive enquiries and bookings for Croke Park meetings and events. It promotes the range of facilities and event options available to all event organisers. The best-in-class UX and UI design approach for interactive mapping for event facilities was core to the lead generation requirements.
Strata3 implemented an advanced analytics deployment, setting up Google Tag Manager, goal tracking, site search, campaign tagging and PDF downloads, all configured and tracked within Google Analytics.
Results.
The new website gives Croke Park complete control to update content themselves and manage digital marketing assets, such as content modules, including text, images, videos, testimonials, lead generation, calls to action, facilities and event information.
Interactive stadium facilities and seating mapping to reach, attract and retain event attendees were core to the responsive design solution and the deployment of the Kentico EMS platform.
All of the above has been achieved on a fully responsive site—critical when so many visitors are on mobile and tablet devices.
Post-launch page views have already halved while time spent on the site remains the same (thus achieving the objective of being able to find the right content and information with only a couple of clicks).
Key criteria for choosing Kentico Xperience.
The Kentico EMS platform was selected due to the following factors:
- It is fully responsive.
- CMS, E-commerce and Marketing functionality all exist on the same platform.
- It features personalisation modules.
- The platform is flexible and easy to use by a small marketing team.
Strata3 has delivered a fantastic website that showcases our stadium and works as a primary business, marketing and communication channel
