We’re proud to launch our latest improvement in our customer experience, a fresh look and digital home for Mission Raceway Park!
This website is part of a bigger commitment to provide a better experience for our fans, racers and volunteers that keep our track running day to day. One of the key areas we’ve identified as a struggle was the interaction racers and fans have with our current website. It’s clunky, terrible on mobile and challenging to find what you’re looking for.
We’ve been working with Goat for over a year on a number of initiatives, and with their help, we were able to design, develop and launch the new site in under 2 weeks. Now – we don’t recommend this for everyone, but it was a project we knew we could trust them with. We asked Terence from Goat some questions to better understand how the site works and functions:
Kevin Ness – MRP
How did you guys design and build this in 4 days? That seems crazy to me.
Terence Sawtell – Goat
We identified 2 areas on the site that were the highest priority. The first one being Events. The old site had multiple places to find information for events, so we spent the first hour drawing up the architecture of the site. Simplification was key here. We reused tons of code and elements from 100+ sites we’ve built to keep things quick. No fancy animations or designs, just a focus on making things functional and easy to use not only for the users, but the people maintaining the website. Content was actually the most challenging part. There was tons of information to move over from the old site!
To get it all done, we left the office for 4 days (4 people) and focused 100% on the task at hand. No distractions. No other clients. Just hard work.
Kevin Ness – MRP
What’s your favourite feature on the new site?
Terence Sawtell – Goat
100% the Event Status on each event page. Mission Raceway Park gets tons of questions through Social Media, Phone Calls, Text messages etc about the status of a race. Is it rained out? Cancelled? Maybe going?
As soon as you get to the home page, you can see the next 3 events and their current status. If it say’s Race On, assume it’s good to go! If it’s looking a little shaky and the weather is being unpredictable, it’ll say Pending with some rain/shine icons. If it’s cancelled, well… you guessed, it’s cancelled.
I also see a lot of potential with good event recaps and galleries. People love a good recap of an event they missed. You can now see recaps for prior events after they’ve happened once we’ve produced the content, but that’ll take a few more months to get populated.
Kevin Ness – MRP
What’s the biggest difference for racers?
Terence Sawtell – Goat
Right now, there is a lot of manual processes that racers have to go through to get their name on the list to race on specific track days. We’ve talked internally about how we can make the experience more streamlined, to not only save ourselves time from a management perspective, but to save time for racers when registering for events.
Test & Tunes are a common event that racers have to register for in advance. Now you can register right from the page when registration opens. Once it fills up, we’ll take the form down. This will take some time to get used to but it’ll make life a lot easier!
Kevin Ness – MRP
That’s awesome! What’s next on the timeline for the track?
Terence Sawtell – Goat
We have a bigger launch that’s happening at the Lordco NHRA BC Nationals that I wouldn’t miss. The website will be getting consistent upgrades as well, with more work done on the Information section and more integration with the other tracks at Mission Raceway Park. A big area that doesn’t get enough attention is the history of the track. The new History page does a decent job of telling the story, but we have tons and tons of archives from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s that are a really cool throwback. Online ticket sales were something we tested last year as well with good results. You’ll see that happening for every major event this year. We might also test out digital tech cards and Street Legal purchases online, as well as a much improved process when paying for your tickets at the gate. We’ll have a dedicated line for people that purchased online, avoiding the lineup of cars outside the track.
Our media will also be improving significantly, with more focus on the fan interactions and environment. Our track photographers have done a wonderful job capturing the cars and the races, but we’ve got very little footage of the fans and kids enjoying the sights. We’ve got a small team for every major event this year focused on capturing more media and talking to more people.
This year is a big one for Mission Raceway Park, but these upgrades cost money and take time. Support our non-profit track by bringing your friends out, providing feedback and buying tickets. If you have any feedback or want to discuss further, feel free to reach out to Terence at Goat ([email protected]).
Thanks to all our racers and spectators for keeping MRP a cool place to spend a Friday, Saturday or Sunday!
Kevin