A-spot is the first and top-most spot on the web page that gets the most views from the visitors. There are call to action buttons with labels that invite the user to click and explore other pages on the site.

Producers create A-spots for the homepage and show’s landing pages. They set which elements to display as well as where on the image those elements will go.

On each Content Type, there is a Promo Details tab to override title, description, and images of the Content when it goes into the Promo spots. However, all the A-spot contents are created manually.

To create an A-spot unit, the producer selects Content > Add Content > A-spot.

• Administrative Title: Only for internal search purposes.
• Show: Association to a show, if any.
• Link: The overall image’s link, which applies to both Homepage and Landing page. Producer can enter the full URL or use Search button to browse the internal pages.

For each of the uploaded images, producer can visually control the placement and size of the text and call-to-action button on the A-spot.

If the default setting isn’t used due to the long text elements, designers would go back in the CMS to check if the elements are visually pleasing.

At the bottom of the image previews, producer can select/deselect the items to appear on the A-spot.

Below, there are text areas for each item to enter the text that will appear on the A-spot. Producer may add additional call-to-action buttons, up to 3. They usually create up to 2, as the front-end UI doesn’t look good with 3.

The label can be as long as 128 characters, and URL is either the URL after the base URL or external. Even if the content is not published, the A-Spots are created beforehand as the URLs are predictable. However, it doesn’t prevent the producer from making typo and publish the A-spot with a broken link.

Once all the A-spots are created, the producer goes to USA Network > Administer USA Homepage and hit edit button of the corresponding day.

In the A-spot References field, producer can search with the administrative title of the A-spot. They use a set format ([SHOW NAME]: Aspot: [TITLE OF THE A-SPOT]) to name the A-spots so they are easy to retrieve.

When promoting content on other spots, producer can create a Promo content. Currently, they are trying to use the Promo fields attached to each of the content and reduce the number of Promo content types as much as possible. They are currently using Promo for animated GIFs or external links.

After you publish the Promo content type, it automatically appears in the Latest Content block. In order to prevent that, producer has to check the Exclude from Related Content block option.

We designed and developed a prototype for Promo content type and user-tested it with producers from each brands, including USA.

In addition to the required Title field, Association card, and Media card that are common across the Content Types, Promo Content Type has a Kicker field, which is often displayed above the title of the promoted content.

It also features a separate Promo Title field, which would be the consumer-facing title. The required Title field would be only used for the internal searching purposes.

Promo Wrapper page when all the basic information is filled.

The Title field is informative of what this Promo is for, while the Promo Title holds the text that would be displayed on the Promo unit on the front-end.

Since this is promoting a specific Episode of Royal Pains, the producer may choose to identify the Channel Reference, even though it is not required. This helps indexing and categorizing the content and makes it easier to search for in the library.

The image to display for the Promo Content type would be a Primary image, as it is the main and only image of the Promo Wrapper Content Type.

In the case the Promo only holds a single call-to-action button, producer can choose Single link option and enter the appropriate label for the button. In the URL / Content item field, she can either choose from the existing content type or enter a URL for the button to link to. There is also an option to select to open the link in new window.

The selected content type will display the published state in order to avoid mistakes of publishing the Promo Wrapper with unavailable content types.

Each brand should be able to configure the options in image usages. Currently, the tech leads have the ability to expose or hide options via Structure menu.

The focal point on different platform sizes and the see-ahead strip can be configured in the Edit screen of the primary image. After setting the focal point on where she wants it, the producer can preview all the different image styles that specific image generates. A-spot strip and Mobile size A-spot are featured in this example.

In order to be an effective preview, all the A-spot previews should have text overlay.

By selecting Multiple links option, producer can add multiple links to the Promo. When there are multiple links, each link should be assigned with one of the usages: call to action button, text link, or image link.

In this example, she adds another link to be a text link, which will appear as a hyperlinked text below the call to action on the front-end. This text is linked to the microsite URL, and the option to open it in the new window is selected.

As an alternative to the Promo Wrapper, the producer may use the Promotional fields available in each Content Type or Video Metadata to set the Promotional information.

This applies only in the case where 1. The link goes to a Content’s or a Video’s page AND 2. There is only 1 call-to-action needed. If the A-spot unit needs to 1. Link out to an External page OR 2. have more than 2 call-to-action, Promo Wrapper should be used.

After creating all the Promo Wrappers and/or entering the Promo information in Contents, the producer has to update the Homepage’s A-Spot. The quickest way is to find the Homepage A-spot Collection in the Collection Library. The producer needs to know the right filter and the Title of the Collection in order to use the Collection Library.

In the future, it is vital to offer a keyword search in the Libraries. Currently, all the Libraries’ result can only be narrowed down by Filters. This makes it difficult to retrieve Contents that do not have Channel Reference, Category, or Tags. Producers may now start adopting the habit of making the appropriate Associations, but the massive amount of content that already exists would not have those association upon migration, not to mention the fact that not all content to be created after launch might have appropriate associations to make.

Going into the edit screen of the Homepage’s A-spot Collection, the producer can choose the Promo Wrapper by start typing the title.

The item search in Collection needs to offer more information than just the title and the content type, as well as the option to further filter down the result. As Promo Wrappers’ titles would be consumer-facing, the titles may be quite generic, like the title of the series as in the example. Thus, there can be multiple Promo Wrappers and Content Type itself that have the same title, and it would become impossible to distinguish one from the others. There should be a thumbnail, unique number ID, date created/modified, and/or the creator/modifier in order to distinguish the items from the massive library of content.

Alternatively, each content type can have “Administrative Title” that is only for internal search purposes. Then the producer can give unique title to the Promo Wrappers and other contents without having to name it for consumer-facing purposes.

After selecting the Contents and Promo Wrappers to promote in the A-spot, the producer would hit Publish in order to make it go live on the site.

Based on USA’s current use case, there is a need to schedule the time of the A-spot content to go live. This can be achieved by one of the following two options:

1. Each item can be scheduled to go into/removed from the Collection. This option reuses the “Homepage A-spot” Collection and reduces the number of Collection that lives on the CMS. The downside of this is that the producers can’t reuse the Collection that was previously up on the site. Use case of this case, however, would be very minimal, if any.

2. Entire Collection can be scheduled to go into/removed from the Collection Group. This saves all the Collections that were ever created on the CMS, thus makes it easy to retrieve the A-spot that was created in the past. However, this would create new Collection each day - USA schedules to update the Homepage A-spot every day - and eventually weigh down the CMS.

In the individual Promo content, there are Tagline (equivalent of Kicker), Title, Link, and image fields. There is also an option to opt out of the Show Landing Page’s Dynamic Collection if the Promo is meant for the Homepage only.

Bravo has a different access point; when the producer is logged in, he can always see View and Edit options. Edit takes him to the Layout screen.

Layout defines what content that each section holds. Each section has a limit of contents that can be shown in the front-end page, and it clearly lets the producer know which content is published, scheduled, and not displayed.

By clicking on the plus icon, producer can add a new Promo.

This is how a single Marketing Band Content Type looks like. Producer needs to upload multiple images for different layouts and screen sizes.

After the Marketing Band is created, producer can find this Marketing Band in the corresponding Marketing Band Collection, which belongs to a Collection of Collection that ultimately displays this content to the assigned Series’s landing page.

This is the initial screen of a Feature Content Type. This is closer to the Promo Content Type of other brands; it has Title, Image, Headline, and Link.

After the Feature is created, producer can find this Feature in the corresponding Feature Collection, which belongs to a Collection of Collection that ultimately displays this Feature on the assigned Series’s landing page.