New WRC website gets off to a flying start

While most of us were easing our way back in to the New Year, the all-new wrc.com screamed on to the web at midday on 2nd January.

The centrepiece of the new site is the most comprehensive catalogue of rally videos ever assembled. Making it effectively a rally TV channel on the web, there are hundreds of videos already available and there will be new videos appearing every day (with up to four per day during WRC events). There will also be live video streams from events, making the site the essential destination for all rally fans. Of course, all the new video is absolutely free, marking a complete departure from the previous site.

Of course all the video in the world is of no value if visitors cannot find what they are looking for. To that end there is a new, and much simpler, navigation system and a new colour scheme which is far easier on the eye.

The video is complemented by a massively more comprehensive editorial offering, under the editorship of Steve Webb. By bringing the editorial in-house, the new site can offer faster and higher-quality editorial to our audience. John Nolan of North One, the new rights-holders to WRC, said, “This site embodies everything we doing with WRC, now that we have taken over. We have always firmly believed that the public would appreciate quality, and the initial response to the new site fully justifies that belief. Traffic on the first afternoon was 46,000 pages, rising to 78,000 pages on the first full day. We are sure that the new site will become the website for all rally fans.”

The design and build of the site was undertaken by Spyder Redspy Ltd, already well known for the Fifth Gear website. Said Managing Director Jay Nagley, “We were given the contract in October 2006, probably because we were the only people (a) silly enough to agree to a three month delivery and (b) professional enough to actually deliver in that timescale.”