Giant Bomb created an eclectic array of content in the past but increasingly leaned towards creating podcasts and video content without a proper homepage that reflected this.
The previous homepage presented most of its content through a catch-all feed, making much of what was published lost in the crowd no matter the subject or content type.
As Giant Bomb started to focus more on podcasts and video content, the homepage had an opportunity to as well but lacked the chance to showcase this content through different angles.
While the page had content listed by recency, there was an absence to show content in different groupings: by event, popularity, subject matter, etc.
The homepage had an opportunity to help users discover new things to watch or listen to but was limited by having only a single feed of content that couldn't change and evolve the way content does over time.
The homepage was the first interface to use the grouped related content modules developed on the Phoenix platform to organize and display like content. The CMS also allowed groups of content to be added, removed, and rearranged on the fly depending on the needs of the site.
Not only did adding this functionality give flexibility for the staff throughout the year, it provided much needed scalability for showcasing content related to events throughout the year like E3 and Game of the Year.
As the team was focusing more on creating audio and video content, the homepage needed to reflect this. Standard groups of content leaned towards these pieces while avoiding to dedicate large areas of the page to the kind of content less frequently created like reviews and other written pieces.
While the page honed in on podcasts and video series most of the time, it was also flexible enough to showcase other content like written Top 10 lists during Game of the Year events when they were contextual.
The homepage was built to consider and change depending on three basic user types: logged out and general visitors, logged in non-premium users, and premium subscribers. Promo spaces, carousels, and more could be adjusted for these kinds of users without too much effort.
This allowed the team to provide states of the page that were more targeted. Premium Subscribers had better access to features like their Watchlist and Continue Watching collections. General visitors were presented messaging focused on learning more about premium subscriptions and other general information.