Sports Web Site Design
Imaginative solutions, partnership and support for busy sports clubs and sports organisations
Design
Top flight sports web sites are amongst the busiest on the internet. It is important that web pages, databases and servers can handle the ebbs and flows of traffic during the season. A site that works well in the 'off' season may crash to its knees on transfer deadline day, or if a club gets through to the finals of a major competition. Omniweb has two decade's experience in building web sites for Premiership football and rugby clubs and have built web sites at country, league, club and grassroots levels.
Sports web sites have to be accessible to a very wide range of visitors. From the very young to the very old. This includes people who are likely to have accessibility issues with vision, hearing and motor function.
As well as adhering to all the latest web standards, sports sites also have to be visually engaging and also able to cope with video and audio.
Social media requires that we make it easy for supporters to follow the club or sport using whichever platform or social media environment they feel happiest with.
Nowadays there is a lot for a typical press office to do: Preparing the programme, engaging with local and national press, social media bulletins, updating the web site etc. Omniweb tries to build sites that minimise the effort when it comes to updating the web site. You don't need to prepare images in Photoshop beforehand, you can just upload high resolution images to the site and let the server do the rest, even if they are in an image format that you have never heard of.
Interestingly, the same is true for documents, and about 50 different audio, video and other file formats.
The web server stores all your original media. Anything uploaded to the web site is stored in a database and can be called up and downloaded - even if you are on tour overseas.
Revenue
Online Merchandise
Every sports organisation is concerned with revenue. Omniweb has a great deal of experience in selling sports merchandise on-line. Not only for clubs, but also for sports wear manufacturers. There is a complete set of management tools that allow you to update products, imagery (again no Photoshop required) and pricing. You can have "related items", special offers, vouchers and even personalisation with names/initials etc.
The online merchandise system has full sales analysis of all orders and can be used in conjunction with Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems and can be connected to stock control systems and fulfilment house systems for automated shipping and to show products for sale only when stock levels exist.
Online Ticket Sales
Omniweb has an online ticketing solution that can take orders for both home and away games. It can book tickets down to stand, block, row and seat. It can easily cope with multiple stand areas, concessions and disabled sections.
Online Season Ticket Sales
Another module is for season ticket sales. This allows one family member to purchase tickets for himself / herself and other family members. Season ticket renewals and new orders are possible.
Premium Content Members Areas
We have created premium content "members" areas for some of our sports clients which bill members a monthly "direct debit" from their credit cards. This gives them access to insider news and video, plus SMS broadcasts etc.
Sponsorship Management
Clubs can manage sponsors logos and sponsors areas themselves through the content management system. So a new sponsor can be added very quickly. Omniweb also undertakes special custom projects for customers. For example a couple of years ago we were asked to re-brand the London Irish front page for the 250th birthday of Guinness!
Online Advertising Builder
Omniweb has built a system to allow supporters and local businesses to build their own online advertisements to generate further income for the club. No advert goes live without the clubs agreement but this requires the minimum of management. Payment is taken on monthly "direct debits" from the advertiser's credit card.
Content Management System (CMS)
The CMS is entirely Omniweb's own source code, so there are no license fees to worry about, it also means it can adapted and evolved to suit your organisations requirements. It is simple to use and easy to learn.
The system allows you to upload over 50 different types of file to place on a web page. These include virtually any image file (in RGB or CYMK). The system takes the high-resolution image straight from a camera. During upload, the file is automatically re-sized and if necessary, croppedto produce all the different versions needed for the web site. The system also copes just as easily with PDFs, Word Docs, PowerPoint Files plus a complete range of audio and video formats. Illustrator, EPS and other graphic files not supported by web browsers are also converted automatically into images suitable for use on a web page.
All files uploaded to the web site are kept on the web server. This builds into a massive online database of content which you can access from anywhere with an internet connection. It also acts as a free online back-up.
The CMS has tools for adding, editing and deleting all kinds of page content. News stories, forms, surveys, fixtures, squad and staff biographies, polls, competitions, sponsor information, etc. can all be created easily by staff with minimal training.
Match / Race / Event statistics are very easy to manage. The system can accept web services feeds from sports data suppliers. For our league / country systems we can build feeds to press agencies and betting companies. If you are not using inbound web services, special CMS tools exist for creating results, league tables, statistical analysis for most sports. The system can also generate branded PDF team sheets showing all players on a team, or all contenders in a race, plus their scores. The PDF with the final result can be automatically emailed to specific press agencies.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) / Contact Database
Unusually, the Omniweb CMS also has powerful tools to manage data collected by the web site. Any checkout, form, or members area automatically updates the CRM giving you a snapshot of each supporter and how often he/she interacts with the site. Your staff can update and add entries as clients contact the club.
Even if you have an existing CRM you can export the contact information from the web site into the existing CRM/Contact Database. You can also import from other databases into the Omniweb CRM.
Html Email/Ezine Broadcasts Directly From the CRM
Our ezine broadcast system allows you to build an ezine from news stories and pictures that you can assemble into an attractive branded e-mail newsletter. It is possible to add advertising panels and sponsors that you can change yourselves which can generate additional revenue. You can send a test email to check everything is working as you want it, you can also send it to a group of managers for approval before the main transmission.
With the list builder option, you can specifically search for a group of supporters to send an ezine to. For example: Everyone who has purchased the shirt from the shop in the last 6 months. Everyone who has completed a competition page or survey, anyone who has had a pair of stocks on order but hasn’t had them delivered.
Once an ezine has been broadcast, all opens and reads are logged in the Ezine builder. Each time an ezine is opened the CRM database is updated for that individual showing when the article was read. This means that we can statistically analyse your e-mail reads to find the most effective time/day to send them on.
Each ezine broadcast is logged to a text file. Each ezine also contains links back to that person’s CRM entry so they can manage their account and unsubscribe or update their contact details at will.
Match Info, Statistics etc
This can be managed by our own CMS or we can work with data feeds from sports data companies.
Our CMS also allows you to add club info and results manually. There are modules for fixtures, league tables, player statistics for a variety of sports.
Social Networking
It is very easy to create a Twitter page or Facebook page for an organisation. It is also easy to add likes and shares to promote pages on social media.
We now have systems to allow Facebook / Twitter users to log on to members area using their Facebook or Twitter credentials. We can convert (with the owner’s permission) their contact information so that it is added to the club web site CRM.
We know we can help to grow supporter-base on client’s sites.
We actually have built a social networking site for people going on clubbing holidays. We could use this technology on a sports site to allow supporters to upload pictures and talk to one another on the official site if it was of interest, alternatively we could supply a forum.
Multi-Lingual Sites
Omniweb sports sites can be built to support multiple languages and non-romance languages such as Arabic.
Getting the word out to the press
Some of our sites generate team sheets for matches showing the players' names and positions for both sides. The club badges, club kit graphics and these are emailed as PDF files to designated press contacts before the game and when the result has been decided.
Online Entry Forms
Omniweb has recently developed an online entry form for motorsports. This was developed initially for JetSki racing and takes all the information about the rider, his craft, contact information, sponsors etc and adds this to the systems rider / crew database for that race series. The system works with multiple currencies in multiple series in multiple countries. It also adds all riders to the CRM to enable competition managers to email groups of riders more on race information and safety issues.