During the week of the Championship, the official website, www.theopen.com, becomes a hot place. Its audience becomes global, receiving millions of unique users and billions in server requests.
We chose Sitecore for its flexibility and scalability. It provided our team the possibility to separate the content management from content delivery on individual machines. We, therefore, created on Amazon Web Services multiple machines to serve the wide selection of services required to maintain the platform.
4,000 Man-days put into this project, 33 People from different agency teams in 7 Countries
As teams come together into one common project, challenges are inherent. Dilemmas are inevitable. The all-time secret to get things done is constant communication. Besides that, overcoming difficulties throughout dialogue, structure and a strong set of rules are other relevant key points to have in mind. That is why:
- 1Roles and responsibilities were clearly assigned from the beginning of the project
- 2Teams were split throughout the 16-18 hours in the office, following shift patterns, ready to solve issues rapidly and efficiently
- 3We chose to work Kanban style:
- • Continuous project monitorization through physical or digital project boards;
- • Technical Leadership, from both the Event room and the Media Centre, monitoring all activities;
- • Clear Path to Production strategies.
For The 148th Open at Royal Portrush, we provided a new real-time scores – for both TheOpen.com site and The Open mobile apps (IOS, Android). A serverless approach was our designated choice, after carefully considering all its advantages and key features.
Azure Functions was the designated independent solution, capable of managing and distributing new messages independently while keeping their order (Azure Service Bus).
We implemented and integrated a new ticketing system, provided by Secutix, that allowed us to achieve a sell out Open for the first time in history. We now had complete control over the user journey – this profound digital transformation allowed us to create and deliver different experiences for our users. The conversion rate from ticket landing page to purchase confirmation increased by 126%.
- The fastest ever start to sale in The Open’s history
- Sold out of Championship Day Tickets, 6 weeks after going on sale
- 200k tickets sold
- 50k tickets sold in 2 days
- 1 Data capturing: 260.000 emails during event
- 2 Content personalization for the UK
- 3 Content personalization for the US
- 4 Implemented DFP Banners
Entrusting the technical integrity of TheOpen.com isn’t a decision taken lightly. The website sees a significant increase in traffic during the week of The Open and this offers its own unique set of challenges. The R&A required an agency that could ensure the business-critical infrastructure is managed flawlessly as well as one that can offer a scalable service offer to manage our needs. TEC is an extension of the R&A’s team and work seamlessly to deliver a scalable, robust and reliable service when it’s needed most.
accessed pages
www.theopen.com/leaderboard
www.theopen.com/
www.theopen.com/highlights
www.theopen.com/teetimes