What we can learn and avoid from the new UX design of LiveScore website and mobile app

I have been a fan of the LiveScore app for over 7 years majorly because I am a huge lover of football watching weekend matches from English Premiership, Italia Serie A, Spanish La Liga to German League.

Most of the weekend I found myself in a position where I need to keep up with the current scores of the football matches which led me to start using LiveScore as my major go-to website / mobile app to check match scores over the years.

Sometime around August 2021 (basically the start of a new football season), LiveScore did some major UX overhauling of their website and mobile which allows them to add more features and also enhance the interface and experience. But there was a major challenge which I notice ever since the new design has been live the website which was once one of the faster website to load start been very slow and heavy, most times Livescore will be struggling to load for more than 4 minutes and also if you click on each of the individual matches to see more details that progress takes almost forever to load this left me frustrated as I was already used old version speed load of LiveScore.

What might has cause the new LiveScore website and app to be very slow.

1. A lot of PNG images on the website – from the old website there was no team logo and the new website has a team logo which makes the website look great and better illustrated the team which are playing, but what they did wrong with it was using PNG as the image format, I would have expected the LiveScore team to use SVG illustration which might make the file even smaller maybe 10kb per SVG  file.
2. Feature News – The introduction of features news on the LiveScore app and website is a No-No for me because now you are giving your users any view of you instead of trying to be focused on what you are known for. No matter the news you add on LiveScore I will always go to any sports news website to read about football news and this feature is also part of what is slowing down the load time speed of the website.

What can be done about it as a UX designer

1. As earlier stated – Using more SVG on icons instead of PNG will help the speed of the websites
2. Remove the feature news – we know LiveScore to be Live Score Website, not a Sports news website or app.
3. Allow users to switch to classic mode – I believe allowing users to switch to classic mode if they still insist on the website and app overhalling that was done and do an A&B testing and see which users use the most. Most top companies in the word always allow users to use a classic mode of their product in case they are having difficulties with the new one.

What can we learn from LiveScore

SVG over PNG – If your website is going to have a lot of images, mostly icons use SVG format which can be from 5kb  -10kb to allow your website load quickly

Allow classic mode switch – When pushing a new product always allow users the ability to switch to classic mode, then use the method to do A and B testing to see and learn from their behaviour towards your product.

What do you guys think LiveScore could have done more, add that on the comment section below.

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