Bluescope was approached by Limerick Sports Partnership (LSP) in March 2020 to discuss a website redesign project for limericksports.ie. LSP’s existing site structure was on Joomla and was built in 2014. Although, Joomla has served them well throughout the years, it unfortunately is not as user-friendly when it comes to working on the backend.
The aim of the new website was to create a mobile-responsive e-commerce website to promote upcoming programmes, courses, and events and allow users to register/purchase tickets for such events. The website was to promote brand awareness in ‘Getting Limerick Active’.
The aim of Limerick Sports Partnership is “Getting Limerick Active” together with increasing participation in sport. They run a number of education and training courses as well as some fantastic events throughout the year.
With many fantastic services offered at LSP, it was decided to clean up the main menu navigation that would categorise their services/activities into six key sections in the form of a mega menu structure. Search functionality was added to the website to further help users find what they are looking for at the touch of a button.
The functionality to display events with tickets available for purchase/RSVP was added to the website and displayed throughout the site on all relevant pages. We also integrated Zoom with the Events Management System to allow for easy-creation of events that are to be hosted virtually.
Further features of the website include a brand new directory for Clubs. This is a place where local clubs can register their Club to be displayed on the LSP directory in their chosen field, i.e. Soccer, GAA, etc. Club owners can add their Club logo, email address, phone number, address and more to their own personalised directory listing – free of charge. Each listing is marked as ‘pending’ once submitted and a member of LSP is notified. A member of LSP can then review the listing and publish to the website.
The existing LSP website remained live while we developed their new website in a staging environment. By working closely with the LSP team, we were able to create a website tailored to their needs while keeping mobile functionality in mind. The new website includes fully mobile-responsive menus which allows their customers to view all they have to offer on any mobile device.
Before switching over to the new site, we ensured that all best practice SEO methods were in place, including necessary 301 redirects. Without these in place, Search Engines such as Google would not know which pages to send their customers. The new site replaced the old site with minimal disruption and has been running smoothly since its launch in August 2020.
