The Sounders FC digital experience is expanding.
On Wednesday, Seattle relaunched the club website with an all new version of SoundersFC.com, joining with the newest MLS digital platform. And since fans interact with the website in many different ways, it was designed to be fully responsive and will work on any device.
“From Day One ownership said we want to be about our fanbase and deliver them the absolute best across every piece of our business,” said Sounders FC Vice President of Business Operations Bart Wiley. “It was time for a new website. We had a good site for five years and it was time for a refresh. We worked in conjunction with the league to make sure that the platform with which we deliver our news and information was going to look and feel great to our fans.”
The new SoundersFC.com launched on a centralized CMS platform with all 19 MLS clubs and was the first to be unveiled under MLS Digital’s updated v7 CMS.
The final design also came after Sounders FC sought advice from the Alliance Council.
“We gave the platform in advance to our fan council to review. They had a chance to play around with it and get us some feedback and we took that feedback to the league,” Wiley said. “So they shaped what they thought the site should look and feel like. We provided that feedback to the league and we ended up with a pretty cool site.”
The latest version of the content management system is a customized version of Drupal 7 and takes advantage of innovation created by MLS Digital to deliver news, video, stats, and social content to supporters and fans. In addition, the new site makes extensive use of cloud hosting technology to automatically scale based on demand from Sounders fans.
“MLS fans are the most likely to use smartphones and mobile technology,” said Vice President of MLS Digital Chris Schlosser in a release. “We worked closely with the Sounders to ensure that their fans would have a great experience on any device. 52% of consumption by MLS fans last year came on a mobile device. We truly are mobile first when it comes to new product development.”
Visitors can leave their feedback and notify the Sounders digital team of any bugs by clicking the red button on the lower right hand corner of any page, or by clicking here.
