For my second blog I was supposed to do a website
evaluation. Basically my professor gave
each student a website and wanted us to evaluate it based off of five different
criteria: ease of accessibility, ease of navigation, use of interactivity, use
of video, and quality of content. The
websites that each student received were considered to be destination
websites. A destination website is a
website where a fan can go to and us the website for all of their
information. For example a fan can go on
to the website and buy tickets, see news articles, get the schedule, etc. Basically the goal of a destination website
is for the fan to get everything they could want for the sport organization
from one website.
The website I was giving was http://www.theseattlemajestics.com/. This website is for the Seattle Majestics (as
the web address would suggest). The Seattle
Majestics are a women’s football team in Seattle. The Majestics belong to the WFA (Women’s
Football Alliance).
Now that you know what the website is about lets
dive into the evaluation.
The website’s home page was pretty full of different
information. Across the top you had
hyperlinks to each page of the website with their logo next to that. Under that the name of the team in the team
colors was present but it wasn’t the first thing that drew my eye. When first opening the page the first thing
that really drew my eye to it was a big sign that said playoffs in big letters
outlined in a florescent green (one of the team’s colors). To the left of that is the teams twitter
account and to the right is the 2014 schedule with the score and outcome of
each game. Than under the schedule was
ticket information. Under that and on
the opposite side under the twitter account all the different sponsors had
their advertisements. In between the
advertisements were some video clips from different games this season, there
were four videos total. Finally on the
bottom is the copyright information and hyperlinks for the about, calendar, and
contact pages. Finally, also on the
bottom is a link to the WFA website. Overall
the home page is very crowded and not really pleasing to the eye.
Ease
of Navigation:
Everything on the site was pretty easy to navigate. I clicked on each of the different tabs at the
top of the home page. The only issue I
found with these tabs was that when your mouse hovered over the Media tab a
menu came up and you could select a page from them. The issue was with the color of each
hyperlink. The background of the entire
website is very dark (mostly black) and the menu hyperlinks were a dark
gray. This made it a little more
difficult to read what they were. Also,
scrolling through each page was pretty simple, even scrolling through their
twitter account was easy. The homepage
also made it easy to follow the Seattle Majestics on twitter. You only had to click the follow icon and
were following them. One thing that didn’t
make it easy to navigate were their sponsors.
They have many sponsors on the homepage and some of them had hyperlinks
to their websites and other did not.
Scrolling through the homepage you just don’t know which ones will take
you to their page and which ones won’t. As
I mentioned earlier at the bottom there were also some hyperlinks that took you
to different pages. I clicked on each
one and found that the about hyperlink took you to a blank page. There was nothing on it at all. In my opinion this is an important page to
have. You want people to know about you
so you should have a fully functional about page.
Use
of Interactivity:
For this I wanted to see how easy it would be to buy tickets. On the home page there was a spot to click on
to buy tickets to their June 21st playoff game. I clicked on it and was taken to the team
store (which didn’t actually sell any merchandise only the playoff
tickets). From there I could select
either an Adult ticket for $12 or a Senior/Military/Youth 6-18 ticket for
$10. Once you selected your ticket it
took you to the PayPal website to pay for the ticket.
Use
of Video: The home
page had video from the most recent season on it. The video was from YouTube and because of
this the usual YouTube ads would pop up.
Overall the videos were well done and showed some different highlights
from different games. It showed some
highlights from pregame, fans, warm-ups, plays throughout the game, and post-game
interviews. They were all set to music
which made it a little corny if you ask me.
The videos were easy to use but because of the music and because there
was just so many clips it was boring to watch.
One thing I thought was a little odd was that it not only showed clips
of good plays by the Majestics but it also showed good plays by the opposing
team. In my opinion if they cut down on
the clips, separated the interview from the highlights, and add some voice over
explaining the videos that would make them much more interesting. Also, I think they should only have the most
recent game’s highlights on the home page.
Quality
of Content: The content
quality was lacking. One of the links
that took me to news archives had promotional things from 2012 (advertising the
end of the year banquet). All of the
content under this section was promotional items (most out dated like the
banquet) and nothing to do with news.
Also, when looking at the staff page only the head coach/ offensive coordinator
and the defensive coordinator/skill positions coaches had pictures, the other
four coaches didn’t have any pictures.
The player roster didn’t have any pictures of the players either (they
should have at least had a place to click on each player and get a little more
information on them, as well as a picture).
Next, the schedule page was just a bigger schedule than what was on the
home page. It also had the previous year’s
schedule on it. Finally the biggest
problem for the content was the fact that when I first saw the website I had no
idea what the Seattle Majestics were. At
first I thought it had something to do with golf because one of the tabs at the
top said golf. Then I scrolled down and
saw the videos, so I knew it was football but I didn't find out it was a women’s
football team until I saw in the twitter feed the owner saying “Way to go,
ladies” and clicked on the link to WFA.
Areas
of Improvement:
I’ve already talked a little about how some of the areas cold improve
but generally the website could improve by just updating a lot of their information. As I mentioned before they had promotional
items that dated back to 2012. Next I
think they could improve by having more written information on the site. Almost all of the information on the site is
either pictures or videos. I want to see
some written information in the about section (instead of nothing at all) and
some more written information about players, coaches, and the league they
belong to. If I’m going to be a fan of
this team I want to know about the team.
Finally, they need to make the website more professional. It looks a lot like this blog of mine. I would expect a destination website to look
much better than a blog.
Check the website out and let me know if I missed anything.
Jayson,
ReplyDeleteI evaluated the same website as you and agree with most of the problems you found on the site. I was also confused for awhile at what kind of team this was because the colors and layout of the site are masculine. I think your idea of having more information such as an "About" page would be very helpful for new visitors to the site. I had an issue with the videos on the "Media" page as they only played the sound and didn't show any picture content and was wondering if you had the same problem on the site or if it was just my computer.