Showcasing the finest
flat racing in the world

The brief

Having worked with BCS for several years, we were delighted to be asked to redesign, redevelop and relaunch their online offering. Their ultimate goal: to bring flat racing in the UK to a new generation of racing enthusiasts. Whilst horse racing is seen as prestigious, that can be intimidating to some. A significant part of this project was to make the BCS brand more accessible and exciting to general sports fans as well as racing enthusiasts.

What we did

We began by helping BCS form their brand messaging and to articulate who they are, and how they can appeal to a new market. We did this by creating a simple brand platform that set their vision, their mission and values, and tone of voice guidelines. This new brand position acted as our north star throughout the design process.

To bring engaging content into the website, we used a dynamic model, utilising various API feeds from the British Horseracing Association.

The BCS team are no longer required to manually update leaderboards and results tables, and the implementation of an easy-to-use CMS via WordPress means that content editors can easily make changes to content and copy.

Engaging content

We turned our focus to the site map as an initial piece of optimisation work, moving away from the news-oriented layout and navigation, and bringing riders, events, results and venues to the forefront.

By redesigning and streamlining key content areas such as jockey profiles, leaderboards and results tables, information became more accessible and easier to understand.

With up to 70% of site traffic being around Champions Day, we chose to bring the iconic event to the forefront of the site. We also optimised fixtures pages to be more engaging and user-friendly.

Photography and video also played a large part in adding variety to the site, not only as foreground images, but background content too.

Website features

The new website is built in WordPress. Our experience with the platform allowed us to tailor the website, CMS and its various plugins to offer a straightforward and accessible solution to the BCS content team.

With a new mobile-first audience taking a keen interest in horse racing, we designed for smaller screens first, paying close attention to navigation and a more succinct approach to copy.

We implemented best-in-class SEO tools so that we can work with the client on overall performance, and we moved the entire infrastructure to Orangery’s low-carbon hosting solution.

The result

The entirely refreshed website is a user-centric and content-rich celebration of the British Champion Series, not only re-establishing them as the world’s largest horse racing series, but appealing to a greater audience of keen flat racing fans.

As we approach a new season, we look forward to supporting BCS on their new journey, seeing an increase in website visits and engagement, and attracting the next generation of racing enthusiasts.