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Net Profits: When Saturday Comes - February 2005 |
Concerned you haven't been giving your club
enough money online? Seems unlikely, but a group of consultants
have been telling clubs just that. A jaundiced Ian
Plenderleith reviews their review.
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| Do Premiership teams listen to criticism from
their fans? Only if the fans picket board meetings and shout
loud enough to garner coverage in the national press. Do Premiership
teams listen to criticism from fans about the official club
website? There's no empirical proof, but I'd guess the answer
is, "Probably not much". However, if that criticism
comes from "an internet consultancy using a holistic approach
to add value to a company's online presence", it might
be a different story. |
| Late last year, a firm using the grandiose
self-description above, net-progress, issued the results of
a survey
that slammed teams for the mediocre quality of their official
websites. However, this was no clarion call for fan-written
articles condemning board incompetence and rip-off ticket prices.
Rather it took the form of a stiffly delivered, virtual power-point
presentation taking clubs to task for committing what counts
in the eyes of consultants as the crime of all crimes - failing
to maximise revenue opportunities. Translation:
not making as much cash as possible. |
| While a handful of teams were singled out for
some praise (Everton, for example, were lauded for providing
a Chinese text version of their site for all their, erm, Chinese
fans), the overall picture was of cumbersome downloads, annoying
pop-ups, broken links and poor accessibility for the visually
impaired, which all help prevent site visitors from, say, racking
up huge bills at the replica-shirt section. |
| The survey looked at three areas. In terms of
quality, the survey found a number of factors (notwithstanding
actual content - an area which, perhaps advisedly, was ignored)
that could lead to users abandoning a site. These included "quite
long and detailed" registration processes, which could
cause surfers to go to independent media or unofficial club
sites instead, and download speed, which the survey, while acknowledging
that more and more people are switching to broadband, said remained
way too slow for the many users still connected via dial-up
modem. |
| Considering the number of fans abroad that top
teams now supposedly either boast or court, clubs were criticised
for their limited or non-existent foreign language options,
which the survey views as "a missed opportunity".
Sixty per cent of the websites also use pop-ups, which net-progress
says is "generally considered to be poor practice"
(that is, users swear out loud when they appear on screen),
while 75 per cent have "similarly discredited" flash
screens. |
| On visibility, the websites scored better, meaning
that if you don't know a team's exact web address you'll find
it pretty quickly via a search engine using the team's name
or nickname. However, the report highlights that "many
of the websites fail to perform for a search term based on their
merchandise". To the consultancy this again means potential
lost cash, or fewer "successful transactions", to
use the report's language. |
| Finally, websites were judged as lacking on their
accessibility, meaning that for those with poor eyesight, very
few of these sites provide an accessible version with larger
font text. Of course the report's authors were concerned about
equal treatment for all potential users, but this is also important
because people with poor eyesight - an estimated ten per cent
of users - have money, too (or, to quote our friends, a "discretionary
budget"). It's also good for "brand reputation"
and because of equality legislation you might lay yourself open
to prosecution if this particular market sector gets angry enough
from squinting to sue. |
| The survey is mean with its awards. No club was
awarded a net-progress "gold standard" (though it's
unclear how coveted these awards are in the football internet
industry), only Everton made silver, and only Charlton and Manchester
United received commendations. But then if consultancies concluded
everything was pink and rosy they wouldn't be invited back for
another go this time next year. |
| On the other hand, its targeting of areas that
could mean potential cash losses at least speaks the language
that most top-flight clubs understand. If these lead to improvements
that help fans to browse club websites more easily, then the
world will be a better place, albeit by a very slim margin. |
| It's instructive, though, that football on the
internet is attracting the attention of the same besuited, jargon-spouting
leeches that have infiltrated football as a whole. The assumption,
or the conclusion, among those who puff themselves up with tagged-on
titles such as "consultant" and "agent"
is that there is always more money to be made. |
| In this case, as so often, it's the fan who's
the target. I can't speak for the majority of top-flight fans
(you'd have to pay me handsomely to get me on a Premiership
team's official site), but it's still open to question how much
cash a club website can generate and how much effort it's worth
for a club to invest in it. Do fans surf their team's homepage
to find out kick-off times and the excuses for last Saturday's
defeat, or are they really there to spend yet more money they
haven't already spent on tickets and travel costs? To find out
the answer, we may have to stay tuned for another thrilling
and crucial "behaviour analysis and reputation management". |
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