Pro­vid­ing an excep­tion­al user expe­ri­ence is a top pri­or­i­ty for many brands, and espe­cial­ly so for news and media pub­lish­ers. ESP­N’s new web­site redesign shows their com­mit­ment to the “mobile-first” approach that many brands are adopt­ing, and the prin­ci­ples of respon­sive design, that ensure seam­less user expe­ri­ences across the devices con­sumers are using.

ESPN has announced a major site redesign to launch next spring (just in time for the site’s 20th anniver­sary), mark­ing the first rein­ven­tion of the pop­u­lar online sports news site in five years.

ESPN is let­ting users who want to expe­ri­ence the new site design sign up to the pub­lic beta, although there is a wait­ing list for eager testers.

Here are a few exclu­sive pre­views of the new-look site designs, first shared with Mash­able, con­trast­ed with how they appear cur­rent­ly.

The new mobile site in par­tic­u­lar is much more opti­mized for a clean, effi­cient use of space and nav­i­ga­tion, with three sim­ple head­ings (Favorites, News, Now) through which users can swipe and explore.

Mobile-First, Cohesive Experiences

In an inter­view with Mash­able, Ryan Spoon, ESP­N’s senior vice pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal prod­uct man­age­ment, explained the goals of the new site:

“We set out to build a mod­ern ESPN.com that show­cas­es our expan­sive con­tent (scores, analy­sis, high­lights videos, and games) beau­ti­ful­ly and intu­itive­ly across all devices and screen sizes. Fur­ther­more, we aimed to cre­ate a cohe­sive aes­thet­ic and expe­ri­ence across the new ESPN.com and our native appli­ca­tions like Sports­Cen­ter and Fan­ta­sy Foot­ball. Over time, you will hope­ful­ly notice that our site and our appli­ca­tions feel con­nect­ed and famil­iar.”

A first glance at the new desk­top designs also show­cas­es a dra­mat­ic mod­ern­iza­tion of the ESPN site:

The dis­tinc­tive top score­board remains, but the nav­i­ga­tion, and white tiled cards against the off-white back­ground, are a vast improve­ment on the clut­tered table designs of the cur­rent site.

The Benefits Of Responsive Design

The new site has also been built with a mobile-first men­tal­i­ty, and to the prin­ci­ples of respon­sive design. It fol­lows a strong trend amongst news and media pub­lish­ers com­mit­ting to deliv­er­ing seam­less user expe­ri­ences across devices.

There are numer­ous ben­e­fits of respon­sive design. Here’s a quick sum­ma­ry of the key points for CMOs:

1. Increased Engage­ment With Tablet, Mobile Users: Mobile and tablet usage is grow­ing to new unprece­dent­ed lev­els and pro­vid­ing a good expe­ri­ence for mobile users ensures they con­tin­ue to engage.
2. Uplifts In Rev­enue, Con­ver­sion Rates: Respon­sive design ensures con­sis­ten­cy, avoid­ing annoy­ing issues for users such as tiny but­tons, and max­i­mizes rev­enues and con­ver­sions on dif­fer­ent devices.
3. Ana­lyt­ics And Report­ing: Hav­ing a sin­gle respon­sive web­site means hav­ing the abil­i­ty to tie togeth­er all your ana­lyt­ics and report­ing. The pop­u­lar Google Ana­lyt­ics suite now allows users to seg­ment and ana­lyze data from dif­fer­ent devices.
4. Bet­ter Organ­ic Search Vis­i­bil­i­ty: Pub­lish­ing on a sin­gle respon­sive site is much more ben­e­fi­cial from a organ­ic search per­spec­tive, avoid­ing poten­tial prob­lems with dupli­cate pages, and unit­ing con­tent in one ecosys­tem.
5. The Offline Brows­ing Expe­ri­ence: Respon­sive design is close­ly linked to HTML5, which also fea­tures improved offline brows­ing capa­bil­i­ties. In the con­text of mobile devices, it means adopt­ing respon­sive design is also great for serv­ing users who are on the move.