Taking care of race registration and results for the West Australian Marathon Club
The brief for this work was simple. Too often we try to sign up for a race or an event and are faced with a confusing and sometimes, challenging experience. The West Australian Marathon Club (WAMC) approached us with this simple requirement: make it easy.
Unravelling their existing WordPress presence, we found the all too familiar culprits of a UX downfall. Duplication of data, plugin confusion, and no distinction between content management and a web application. It was clear early on that to meet the brief, we would have to start from scratch.
We broke down the site’s core functionalities based on needs and time frames. We thought about each persona and how they would interact with the website: Runners, Coaches, Volunteers, Race directors, Timekeepers, External systems, Finance and Operations. Focusing on the goals of each we put together a plan that spanned two years. This is the story of what we have achieved so far.
It’s what’s on the inside that counts
In 2019, little did we know that a two-year plan will become four and that we would be faced with a pandemic level drama! What we initially launched in 2019 is very different to what is live today. Adversity creates the possibility for change.
We embraced the challenges that we faced and managed to craft a solution that has increased membership, made the club financially stable, elevated the brand and most importantly, made it easy. One click race registration is no longer a dream, it is reality.
Race Management
Our user-friendly race director admin panel takes the hassle out of managing upcoming events. It handles everything from registrations and cancellations to teams, volunteers, discounts, and even automates bib allocation and cut-offs, ensuring a smooth race experience for both directors and participants.
Member Portal
Club members can securely log in and register for an upcoming race in one click. They can also manage family memberships, see race history and view their race results.
Volunteer Management
We made it easy to map volunteers to events and what they can help with, Volunteer managers can manage the event roles and schedule.
Redesign
Working with WAMC’s existing branding, we designed a clean UI to inform and direct users to race registration, results and membership. Rebuilding the site ensured clean coding, good accessibility and faster speeds.
Administrative Control
The custom back-end admin handles race management, volunteer management, and merchandise sales and has a member CRM where WAMC can support their members.
Timing Chip Integration
Matching members, timing chips and race RFIDs the system automates the support of different timing providers for results processing. This is makes it easy for timing volunteers to upload raw data and let the system do the work.
The future
We feel we have achieved the client’s brief but we are not stopping, we are continuing to work with WAMC to support and add new features and tweak the user experience.