Last week, football club A.S. Roma did what’s probably the most 21st century thing ever—they crowdsourced ideas for redesigning their website on Reddit.
Paul Rogers, who works on the media side for Roma, realized that they needed an overhaul when the website was voted the 6th worst of all the Champions League team websites. Instead of going about the redesign traditionally, however, Paul (a.k.a. Paul_R_Roma) posted on Roma’s subreddit asking for anyone—writers, bloggers, website editors, and regular fans alike—to suggest any ideas they have for the new site.
And rather than receiving a bunch of bad or joking ideas, the thread produced a surprising amount of good dialogue between Paul and committed Roma fans.
Suggestions varied, but circled around a few core issues—navigation, layout, ads, and content. Many users said that the navigation and layout were clunky and not intuitive enough, and the ads took up too much space in areas that would be better used for actual content.
Paul repeatedly responded to these issues with a voice that mirrored the frustrations of the fanbase, once saying, “Navigation: Agreed – terrible. All this changes on the new website. Adverts: A necessary evil / requirement – but will be done much better on new site. Structure of current site: Awful. Will all change.”
There were also some ideas that Paul had not considered himself, highlighting the purpose of this whole undertaking. When one user said “A more reasonable request, I’ve noticed there is no careers section on the website,” Paul said that he will look into adding this previously unplanned section. Additionally, users even suggested a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) to promote the website’s launch—a great idea that the Roma media team had not yet thought about.
Other productive discussions involved Paul telling Reddit users exactly why some of their plans would not be totally attainable. When someone said they should have a YouTube channel similar to Manchester City’s to increase exposure, Paul said that it would be quite difficult because of Roma’s already-existing 24-hour tv channel. Instead of unqualifiedly shutting down ideas, he always did his best to provide a basis.
Overall, the project seems like a huge success so far. Paul received some great ideas, and fans were given insight into the future plans for their team’s website. This thread could even be a preview of how teams and fanbases interact in the future; it seemed mutually beneficial for them to be in intimate contact with one another—why wouldn’t others follow suit? As Paul said, “I’m a football fan myself—so I understand football fans want to be involved in what the club does—it’s natural.”
You can check out this ‘natural’ partnership and the full Reddit thread here.