The first thing we tackled was structure.
Not design.
Not colours.
Not animations.
Structure.
Because once we reviewed how content was organized, it became obvious that navigation was doing more work than it needed to.
Over time, categories had expanded naturally as the platform grew. That's normal for any content-driven website. The challenge is making sure that growth remains manageable.
We reorganized content pathways, simplified navigation logic, and made it easier for readers to move between related stories.
The goal wasn't to reinvent the platform.
It was to remove unnecessary friction.
Mobile experience received a huge amount of attention throughout the project.
Looking at the numbers, it was impossible to ignore.
A significant percentage of visitors were arriving directly from social media platforms, particularly Facebook and mobile search.
Those users behave differently.
They're moving quickly.
They're often reading while doing something else.
They're less patient.
Every extra second matters.
Because of that, performance optimization became a major focus.
We streamlined page structures, improved loading performance, and simplified several areas of the user journey.
Behind the scenes, we also worked closely with the editorial workflow.
One thing we noticed was that many publishing tasks required more steps than necessary.
Individually those steps weren't a problem.
But when you're publishing content every day, those small inefficiencies add up.
The objective wasn't to introduce complicated new systems.
It was to remove unnecessary effort wherever possible.
Throughout the project, we kept asking ourselves the same question:
"If a football fan lands here looking for information, how quickly can they get it?"
That question guided almost every decision we made.