If you're on the site today you'll notice a couple of new features when you're clicking around our pages, so let's take a brief look at what's changed, and what's on our radar next in a development blog!
New Homepage
One of our core issues has been how to deal with the pickwatch.com/nflpickwatch.com domains. For reference, a lot of our users find us via NFLpickwatch.com, so we don't want to forward them on to Pickwatch.com, as this causes Google to think we're doing something nefarious!
Our solution has been simple: We've changed the URL https://pickwatch.com to be a new navigation page, where you can go to as a starting point and switch between sports. It's also where we'll be adding some more information about Pickwatch as a company, and what we do.
Of course, if you're reading this, Pickwatch is likely already your secret weapon, but for new users, it'll be a key page that we develop, and over time, we'll look at making the page functional too.
Don't worry, all your nflpickwatch.com bookmarks and coins still work and have full functionality, and we have no intention of removing that URL ever.
You can access the new home page at any time by hitting the HOME menu item. Clicking the sports icon or the Pickwatch logo will always take you back to the homepage of the sport you're currently on - ie: click the basketball icon, and you'll go to https://pickwatch.com/NBA!
New Game Hub Preview Page
Our Game hubs will be expanding this offseason, and this is the first step of the journey. Game hubs are the starting point each week to see the best head to head stats for teams on Pickwatch. You can access them by clicking the ribbon of games at the top of the page, or by clicking the 'at' sign in the table consensus.
Our new 'Preview' page will be the default landing spot when you click on any game hub. This page will include all of the analysis from Michael Schottey, KC Joyner and Upset Watch on EVERY game. You'll need to be a Pro member to see anything that is only for Pro members (duh!) but this will mean you don't need to look up anything elsewhere.
Beyond that, we've also added a new Injury page that has better logic and more useful information. Our new injury tables for each game separate those players who are on IR or long term unavailable lists like PUP, from those who are on the weekly injury report and have a chance to play this week.
Injuries are a key thing we want to upgrade before the next NFL season, and this is a good step forward for us, but there'll be more news on that as we go through the first quarter of the year.
In addition, although I'll cover more of our plans for the near future below, game hubs for all sports are very much on our agenda. We're looking at bringing in high quality analysis for our Baseball, Basketball and Ice Hockey content, but even without it, we want to create a page that quickly gives you the expert consensus, the stats that matter, and the news about that game.
What's next?
March Madness/College Basketball picks will be hitting Pickwatch soon. Our development team is busy on this and we'd expect to be ready for the beginning of February.
Our new Consensus Summary page will be live soon. This is a new way of quickly seeing the expert, fan and Pro consensus picks for each game with no hassle or frills, which is something requested by a lot of first time users. It'll be something you can switch to on our main page if you so desire.
See a sneak peak below:
Don't forget what we've already added over the last month: Pause your monthly Pro subscriptions between sports seasons, check out who picks the last 5 weeks best above the pick tables, and added new pagination options to the bottom of all expert tables to allow quicker navigation to pages deeper in the table!
We also fix bugs almost every day, so if something doesn't quite work right for you, you can always raise it with our team via the intercom button. If you can include a screenshot, description and what device you're using, that's super helpful.
That's all for now, I'll be updating with any new features as they launch, and look out for news on our mobile app, which is now in development with more games and more data for every fan!
The Pickwatch Team