Design your way

Designing sports websites requires both time and experience, but luckily for prospective designers, there are a lot of tricks and hints that can make the process easier, and deliver valuable results.

The best approach is obviously to entrust the task to an experienced sports designer, but that’s not absolutely necessary – in fact, the best sports websites were designed by arena amateurs who simply understood what their audience wants to see.

Before you get all involved in technicalities, consider the essence of the content you’re going to present. What type of sports are you going to promote? Will your website be product or information oriented, or will it combine different portions of information?

Finally – how will your website be unique in comparison to other similar sites? To answer these questions, plan carefully, and give your ideas time to evolve.

How to make a sports website? These are the things you should consider:

The majority of popular sports websites are created with the male population in mind (2/3s on average)
Typical men spend more than an hour per month browsing sports information, most of which aged between 25 and 34 years.
Websites alike those of NASCAR, NFL, and PGA have more female followers than male ones.
The dominant visitors of MLB and NBA sites are males.

Trends, however, are not permanent, and change all the time. Female sports followers are more and more involved in professional leagues, which is why you should target them on an equal basis.

While working on your website, optimize the impact of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Usual sports fans spend a lot of time using them, and that’s exactly where they build communities and discuss common interests.

Another important task is to build a mobile-friendly website, keeping in mind that most fans and online shoppers browse the internet on the go.

Following current trends in web design

Sports websites are very different from each other, but the common thing for all of them is the informational structure they bundle within a relaxed and easily navigated interface. Both when they offer information and products, these websites display a lot of quality imagery, which makes them amazingly effective when it comes to captivating and retaining users’ attention.

This is why it is very important to get some unique, high-quality images to promote a new website.

High-tier and professional images work better than overdone animations. They will capture attention immediately, and encourage visitors to browse for more. Once they are engage, they will also be more likely to respond your calls to action.
The general rule of web design is to avoid pushing visitors in a desired direction, but to find an intuitive way for them to get there. This can be achieved by limiting design elements to few helpful tips and suggestions.
Designers nowadays are paying a lot of attention to white spaces and larger fonts. You can use both of them to highlight important sections of information, and let the user navigate the site without any obstructions. In the past, the design community disregarded large fonts as being too distractive, but over time, they proved to have a very relaxing effect on visitors.
The focus of your attention should be proper branding. Preserve the consistency, and represent your company/team’s identity on every step.
Focus on mobile usability. A website that is not responsive on mobile devices will automatically have 50-60% fewer visitors.
Less is more. The easier it is for users to navigate the pages of your websites, the likelier they will be to find what they’re looking for. This refers also to navigating back to the home page.

Launching sports websites – Tips & Ideas

Rather than helping you promote a sport or a club, sports websites help sport aficionados share their passion with the rest of the world. It is where they can launch discussions on player trades, share updates on your favorite team, display scores and statistics, and much more.

For many fans, this is also an easy way of building a great community, and tackling interest which will eventually turn into traffic and help monetize on advertising.

Before you start, check hosting providers and choose such which offer reliable video streaming. This involves excluding free hosting companies with limited storage offers, as they will restrict your capacity to upload memory consuming media and advertisements.

Get creative with your domain name. The default choice will be a sports-related domain name people will be attracted by (if you have an idea, check whether it has already been used). Those of you who intend to use their site to sell and advertize products should choose a domain that ends with .com (commercial), while those associated to a club or an organization should choose .org.

Unless you’re experienced enough to design a professional template, buy one that could suit your needs. This way, you will have a beautiful site that stands out, and you won’t worry on whether you’ll be able to post content, insert links, or upload different types of media.

You can also request a website template from your hosting provider, as these templates turn instantly into web hosts, and will be visible to users as soon as the site is published.

Start working on your content in advance. An idea could be to write famous players’ biographies, or collect data on upcoming events and championships.

Upload imagery, video, and audio content, and invite experts to discuss sports news and trends. Embed YouTube content, and link your data to other sports-related sites to make the website more credible.

Most of all – invite visitors to share their opinions and to comment on latest news – you can even build a dedicated forum page and enable users to chat with each other.

Another interesting addition for any sports websites is a widget application. This application will allow the site to collect information and live updates (scores, in particular), without your interference, and arranging those on a page of yours.

Customers will appreciate being delivered news in real time, and will definitely consider visiting back.

Leave some space for changes. Check the website regularly, and fix problems right away. If the website is loading slowly, odds are good that you didn’t place links in the right position, or that visitors are not really sure how to navigate it.

Another thing you should keep in the loop is the compatibility with different browsers – in the best case, your website should perform impeccably on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Your colors should be relaxing, and your fonts should be personal (Comic Sans on bright green, for instance, doesn’t help a website look more professional).

Before you publish the website, screen the text for punctuation and grammar errors, and post content only once you’re sure there is nothing wrong with it. If necessary, hire a professional editor.

A personalized sports website – Yes or no?

Motivation is tough to get, be it that you’re starting a gym session or building a website. It is exactly the euphoria of doing something for the first time that makes people give up, and a professional sports website creator should find a way to identify with such difficulties.

For instance, he can prepare a Coaching page for first time trainees, and give visitors the chance to choose who they’re going to work with.

Eye-catchy and attractive sports websites

Making a website more attractive is a fairly easy task, and there are few tricks in particular that can bring visitors to you much sooner than you think. For instance, you can display a great photo gallery, with exclusive photos that are not easy to find elsewhere. This will not only boost your audience, but keep clientele coming for more on the long run.

The rules of leading team sports websites

Random online visitors take less than 5 seconds to decide whether to stay on a particular website. As you already assume, this won’t be enough for them to digest your content, but rather to give it a quick glance and to make instant conclusions. This is how some of the recent web design trends can work to your advantage:

Simplicity in sports websites

The best approach is to limit the number of elements to those that are absolutely necessary.

While it is true that visitors ought to be provided with fresh and detailed information, bundling in every gimmick and widget you can find won’t be too impressive for them. In fact, it may backfire on you, and push visitors away for good.

This is why it is compulsory for you to plan each page with care, and know exactly what each element is supposed to achieve. Basically, add only those pieces of content that genuinely help you accomplish your mission.

This may as well mean eliminating images, texts, and widgets you’re personally fond of, but you must keep in mind that your priority is to streamline your customers’ experience.

Same goes for the rest of the website’s design. Your approach should be purpose-oriented and frills-free. If not sure how to do this, check Google or Apple’s mobile operating systems – despite of being freed of all pseudo-3D elements and gradient textures, they are still elegant enough to dominate the UX industry.

Large, simple fonts and whitespaces

Sports websites usually offer plenty of content, and they should therefore make that content easy to digest for future visitors.

There are two elements that can make this happen:

Fonts
Whitespaces

By whitespaces, we refer to the ‘negative’ space that surrounds the content, and generally makes paragraphs easier to read and to distinguish. In a way, whitespaces secure some breathing space that relaxes the mind and the eyes, and lets visitors focus on what is really important to them – the content.

The next consideration will be the font. According to many popular studies, sports websites work the best with simple and large (at least 14px) typefaces, as this way readers can absorb all information they are looking for without zooming or fetching their reading glasses.

Your brand in the loop

Did it cross your mind how it could be if your team showed up on a match wearing the jerseys of the opposite team? How would fans feel about it? Cheerful is not an option!

The reason jerseys matter so match is that they identify with your brand, and carry the colors and symbols of the team that are common to all fans and supporters.

Why should your website be any different than this? When a loyal fan visits your website, he should feel like home, and you should help him do that by making the website easy to recognize.

The two elements you need for the purpose are the club’s brand symbols: the logo and the colors.

The good part is the WordPress requires really basic CSS knowledge for a user to adjust the color palette, and to apply his own logo in the header text section. Open style.css, and make few simple changes. Your fans will appreciate it!

A mobile-friendly website

Nowadays, website traffic comes mostly from mobile devices, which is why sports websites should be designed in a manner suitable for any screen. This matters especially to the gorgeous images from victory celebrations – we all want those to look well on a phone, don’t we?

This is also important from the usability perspective, and Google and other search engines count on it to arrange results in their search engines. Imagine a user typing in the name of your club in the search bar, and your website not being listed on the first page – wouldn’t that be embarrassing for your team? There you go – compatibility is your top priority!

To achieve mobile friendliness, you can use dedicated themes and plugins, or work around the theme you already have and make it universally responsive. In such way, the website will adapt to every screen where it is displayed.

Seasoned developers with coding experience are the ones you should put in charge of the process, as there is little chance you can do that independently.

There are several ways to achieve this. For example, there are special mobile themes and plugins to make this happen. A shortcut may be to use responsive and ready web templates that adjust easily on every device.

Professional imagery

As people say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and they are more than right. Pictures mean the world to web design, as they make it much easier to communicate to the outer world.

To make your sports website more professional, let fans see real life pictures of the players they are supporting, and give them the full-time hero experience. If necessary, hire a professional photographer and choose images that can improve the quality of your website.

Champion features

When it comes to sports website design, you shouldn’t worry only about its looks – your focus should instead be on making the site functional, and enhancing customers’ experience.

Basically, you should first find a way to deliver information in an appealing and attractive way, and then make sure that the information is actually usable. We will provide tips on how to do that later on in this article.

Display information on upcoming matches

Imagine not being around on a game day, when all fans are waiting for information, and you’re not there to provide it. Your customers will probably not return the following day, as they will not feel motivated to do so.

The central news you’re supposed to provide is the information on upcoming matches, so make sure your followers always have easy access to it.

Social media profiles and contact information

As you know from first-hand experience, a real fan will try to keep in touch with his team wherever the team makes appearance, and this also includes the social media profiles you’re running. Reaching the club will also matter to the press and the prospective sponsorship partners, and it is your task to ensure they can contact you.

The good news is, Internet makes this possible in many ways.

For starters, you can include a dedicated contact section on your website and display all the details, or invite visitors to fulfill a contact form.

Social media profiles are also important contact hubs. You can benefit from the fact that your fans are already using Facebook, Twitter, and other popular network, and display important information straight to their newsfeeds. Plus, social media networks make it much easier to communicate. A responsive email service is also a great idea

A ‘Latest News’ section

The first thing club supporters will be interested to read is the latest news on your team and events, including transfers, victories, and loses. A freshly updated sports websites is also your way to get fans involved into what is happening off the pitch, and give them a behind-the-scenes glimpse to help them connect with you. Therefore, you should also add a dedicated news section.

Dedicated player profiles & statistics

With the season already under way, fans are getting more and more involved on discussing the best athletes in the team, each supporting his favorite player without an objective way to compare him. This is when player statistics come to the rescue!

Numbers are cold, but objective, and will put an end to these discussions (may do, at least). These statistics can also be combined with dedicated team member profiles where fans can learn more on their favorite performers.

Ending thoughts on designing sports websites

Using WordPress, you won’t find it difficult at all to build a beautiful sports team website. Still, don’t get too comfortable about it – at the end of the day, it will be your website that will represent who you are and what you do, and you only get one chance to make it right.

This is why it is important to build a website that shares the message of your team or club, and please users with an on-point, highly visual, and completely uncluttered interface that is also congruent to your brand.

Meanwhile, make sure that the website provides all important information for prospective fans and members, and prepare a compact About Us page. To make the process easier for you, we collected a list of guidelines and tips you can use to impress your followers.

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