Abstract

Gold and Black is an organization based in West Lafayette that focuses on media related to Purdue Sports. It possesses two main divisions: goldandblackdigital.com and goldandblack.com. The latter of the two focuses on real-time information and works hand in hand with other nation-wide real-time sports media websites such as Rivals.com. The other one, the one this paper focuses on, engulfs a different side of sports media. Goldandblackdigital.com is the home website for the Gold and Black Illustrated magazine. The magazine is made of in-depth articles written by professional journalists about specific topics engulfed by Purdue Sports. Along with such magazine, the website is also home for Gold and Black Express, a weekly newsletter that tackles more time sensitive news on Purdue Sports. Lastly, there is also a shop for Purdue athletic gear and fan memorabilia. This side of Gold and Black works within the limits of goldandblackdigital.com and it is the team’s target service. Alan Karpick, publisher of Gold and Black Illustrated, is the main stakeholder for this project. Two meetings have been conducted with him in order to learn more about what they do, their market, and their goals. Through Alan, the team will have access to the subscribers’ email for surveying further along the project’s process. As the team got more familiar with the website, different services became evident. There is the obvious printed and digital magazines service, but there are also several potential services that can be exploited that arise from a common confusion between the two aforementioned websites. Along with these, the team exposed other potential services from studying comparable sports media websites such as ESPN Magazine. Among the interesting finds, the team explores the two different aspects of sports media and how they relate to the project. In the process of creating this paper, the team has made an effort to not only work together but also create a bond that goes past a class project. That bond, along with modern and effective communication applications such as Google Docs and GroupMe has allowed the team to put together this project.

Target Service
Our target service is what we what we set the optimum level of service to be. This may be a certain amount of users or subscribers or website visits per day, solving usability issues, or redirecting the user’s attention to another aspect of the website. In our project we are updating / proposing a website design for Gold and black illustrated. What the team wants to accomplish is to have as many subscribers as possible to prefer the digital version of the magazine, which is available on the website, over the printed version. Our target service would be quantified by the percentage of users that are subscribed to the Gold and Black Illustrated magazine but prefer reading the digital version.
We have information from Google analytics and Cohen publishing which tells us the average website and digital magazine traffic currently. With this, the number of digital magazine readers can be easily known and compared to the total number of subscribers. Our client states that only 30 -35% of Gold and Black illustrated read the digital magazine. The ultimate goal is to get that number as close to 100%. This is due because Gold and Black’s vision is to eventually join Gold and Black Illustrated and Gold and Black Digital to be one website and one app that delivers articles about Purdue Sports in a digital aspect only. A main issue will be to have an increase in digital readers whilst not losing the avid paperback copyreaders.
In order to establish whether our goals for our target service are feasible, we have to investigate and analyze current users of the system as well as the potential audience of the system. This is where the usability issues must remain to a minimum.
Alan Karpick, our client, has stated that using social networks such as Facebook is something they are interested in