WMT Digital & USA Basketball Partnership Successfully Launches New Website Ahead of 2024 Summer Olympics.
WMT Digital and USA Basketball have partnered and successfully launched a rebrand
of the USA Basketball website for fans before the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The new build includes a custom live-stat integration to account for different competitive
matchups happening all over the world, as well as streamlined roster-building and
stat-tracking processes. USA Basketball’s last website refresh came ahead of the 2020
Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Before that, the site also received revamps in 2008
and 2016.
USA Basketball is a “one-of-one brand.” Inside the USA Basketball bubble, star NBA,
WNBA and college players enter and exit throughout Olympic cycles, and with them
comes a massive following of fans. USA Basketball wanted to be able to capitalize on
that interest as well, making for a complex riddle for WMT to solve.
Any project or build WMT Digital partners on, tries to organize data as seamlessly as
possible. A college athletics site and app – which WMT has done many at this point,
such as Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State, to name a few out of the over 40
division one programs it currently is partnered on – illustrates a much simpler process.
Rosters change during the offseason, but for most part, they don’t really change after
that. The players, with specific info like bios and stats, are only usually associated with
only one team.
A ready-made product wouldn’t cut it for USA Basketball though because they oversee
a complex, layered schedule featuring men’s and women’s competitions for 5×5 and 3×3
with varying age groups. Some teams only play every couple of years. Some games are
exhibitions, while other games that have much higher stakes, require different
presentations. Some players appear on multiple teams.
WMT Digital created a database for USA Basketball that allows for a multi-tagging
feature so a player can appear on multiple USA rosters. Player bio and stats go from
there to the multiple rosters. WMT also provided an update for USA Basketball staff that
only requires one update for information that will automatically be applied to all of the
pages in which it appears, as opposed to updating a player bio in multiple places at
once. Two other benefits from the redesign: enhanced historical record keeping and a
site structure that placed editorial content on an aesthetically pleasing pedestal.
WMT prides itself on programmatic SEO, and with that comes some machine learning
to seize the moments of interest when Kevin Durant, Angel Reese or any other
superstar dons the red, white and blue.
Packaging that marketing nimbleness with the easier-to-navigate features of the new
site has yielded positive results for the second half of the calendar.
Comparing that timeframe to the same from last year, site users’ average engagement
time (the time a page is pulled up and is being navigated or focused on) matched the
average site duration (the time a page is pulled up, whether it’s being focused on or not)
from last year. USA Basketball has also seen a 25% increase in users and a doubling in
the number of average page visits for users during a single visit. SEO has boosted USA
Basketball’s organic search acquisitions (acquiring users without paid search or
advertising) as well.
About WMT Digital: Founded in 2012, WMT is a bespoke technology and engineering
firm that is obsessed with solving problems & delivering results. The full-service agency
consists of a team of engineers, designers and developers committed to using
technology to solve complex problems. WMT crafts custom solutions that meaningfully
impact across four main product divisions: Fan, Data, Revenue and Story. In 2024, they
partnered with universities and helped implement NIL programs for some of college’s
biggest stars including Olivia Dunne, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, the Cavendar twins
and many more. For more information, visit: WMT | Full Service Agency | Development
and Digital Marketing
About Andres Focil: Andres Focil is the Founder & CEO of WMT Digital.
Born in Ecuador and migrated to the USA when he was young, he graduated University of
Miami and started WMT Digital. Active in the sports & tech community, he is also the
co-founder of college sports employment site AthleticDirectorU and, retail engagement
platform Stakeholder Labs. He is also a partner at College Sports Connect and enjoys
donating his services to mental health app, HuddleUp.