Building a Drupal platform for champions

F.C. Copenhagen places great demands on the digital part of its brand. It is the club’s mission to take the lead in digitizing the interaction between the Danish football clubs and its fans. A new digital platform and a new website give F.C. Copenhagen the ability to provide its fans with a complete user experience with respect for both feeling and function.

One month after the launch, the number of site users rose dramatically, and users click more around the site, whether they are there to read a news, see a startup or buy a season pass. The bounce rate has decreased, and clicks to both the ticket site and fan shop have risen. Together with FFW, F.C. Copenhagen has created the right digital platform.

Within the limits given in the football world, we have got a new platform that can do everything we want right now. And it’s a great feeling to have. It is a balance between what we can, are able to and must and the experience we want our fans to have with F.C. Copenhagen. Casper Heiselberg, Head of Digital, F.C. Copenhagen

A platform that understands digital football fans

F.C. Copenhagen was committed to creating a digital platform that set new limits to the digital expansion of the F.C. Copenhagen brand and for the interaction with its fans.

The key was to find a solution that would allow F.C. Copenhagen to fulfill the role of a modern football club, which serves the needs of fans, sponsors, and other stakeholders. This required a strategy for the digital user experience based on understanding what makes a good football club site to the users and what makes a great working tool for F.C. Copenhagen content editors.

Football is a whole world in itself, and there are established circumstances that must be taken into account. This includes point systems, rules for time, additional time and substitutions. A very flexible platform should not limit F.C. Copenhagen’s content work regardless of the development of a match. Content-wise, the site is built on news and startups, as in most cases, the main purpose is to visit FCK.DK.

Mobile-first

Over 50% of F.C. Copenhagen’s users use the site from their mobile, and it was therefore essential that the site be designed from a mobile-first principle. 40% do not enter the site via the front page, but instead via articles on social media. All articles have the same function as the front page, and the user can get around the site in the same way as though they started on the front page. This improvement alone brought the bounce rate significantly down.

Today, F.C. Copenhagen uses its new platform to bring the club even closer to its fans, measuring the impact of its digital efforts to further enhance the digital user experience with F.C. Copenhagen. The flexibility of the platform means that, for example, F.C. Copenhagen is not locked in fixed ways to publish content, but has different options that they can test.

At FCK.DK the user can buy tickets, see practical information about matches - the user can inform about future matches, get live statistics during matches and dive into previous matches right back from the club’s start in 1992 - and get news about the club.

There are no dead ends. All site pages allow the user to move on to other relevant content, which has improved the conversion rate on the site, and provided vastly improved experiences for their audiences.

F.C. Copenhagen & FFW

F.C. Copenhagen and FFW consciously pursued a holistic process, combining brand strategy, design and technological skills at the same time, and continuously working towards the same goal, rather than independently.

The cooperation has been good and we’ve reached the goal of a cool website. I’m looking forward to working on a version 2 and finding out what a 2 should contain. Casper Heiselberg, Head of Digital, F.C. Copenhagen