You might have just decided to breathe some life into your local area by starting up a new sports club, or maybe you’re just trying to bring a well-established one into the digital world. Either way, a website dedicated to your team is a great way to get more visibility for your club, whether that is to attract more fans to your page or to bring in potential new members.
We’re going to have a look at the most important things your sports club website will need in order to thrive.
Team logo and colours
This is crucial! Your team colours are your identity, both on and off the pitch. Making sure this is the first thing visitors to your site see will mean they are more likely to recognise you in the future. If you are still trying to decide on a logo, online tools like Placeit and Looka give you templates that you can adapt to your colours and team name. Don’t paste your logo all over the site, but be creative with it; try using a watermark of your logo as the background of your website.
Don’t take all this on yourself, your team should be part of the creative process!
Introduce your club
Your club is unique. It’s not just about the sport, it’s about the sense of community that you have created together, and getting this across is going to help you instil a sense of pride in your team. It will also help fans feel more connected to their players, and attract potential new members to join.
Write a short history of your club, including pictures and information about team members. Don’t feel like you have to stick to the classic posed photo – why not have a mix of in-action photos and fun photos of social events?
If you have a solid fan base, then ask your team members to write a short bio of themselves that you can include it with their headshots in a “meet the team” section.
Keep your visitors and members updated
Having an events schedule that is regularly updated is great for everyone. Your team members can’t use the excuse that they didn’t know when practice was, and your fans won’t be disappointed if they weren’t notified of upcoming matches. This is also a good place to post information about social events, so that even if someone is interested in joining but wants to check out the team first, they can do so.
A news section is a great way to keep your visitors and members up to date on all the latest news going on in your club. Fans want to know more than just the hard statistics of your wins and losses; they want to know what’s happening off the pitch as well! Why not have a regularly-updated blog, giving detailed match reports, or updates on your players’ lives!
Ranking tables are another good way to show that your site is updated regularly and is a great resource for fans and team members to see where your club stands in the league tables. Give your team an incentive by promising them an outing if they move up the league tables.
Team Values
This isn’t necessarily an obvious choice, but drafting up some team values together can really help make sure that you are all working towards a common goal. By making it clear that your team doesn’t accept gender discrimination or bullying, then it is easier to implement consequences for this behaviour. On a more positive note, if your team thinks one of their values is to help the community, then have a look to see if you can help coach young aspiring players, or lend a hand in a community space.
By posting these values on your website, your players will be held to these standards, both by their captain and by their fans.
Become a member
You don’t just want people to join your site, have a quick browse and then leave. Make sure you hook them in! You can use a plugin on your website builder that asks them for their email address so that you can send them updates on events, or a weekly newsletter so that they never miss out on their favourite players’ news. This will help you create a community, and your fans will feel like they are an important part of the process.
Multimedia
When building your website, make sure your visitors aren’t confronted with a wall of text. Good quality images will help your visitors engage with your site and make it seem more professional – have a look at our blog on how to make sure your images are optimised for your site.
Better than images, videos are a huge driver of engagement! Uploading clips of your matches, or highlights of each game could be a great way to keep people on your site. You could also create a YouTube Channel for this which links back to your website, giving you engagement on two platforms.
Building a website for your sports club doesn’t have to be a hassle; with Go Sitebuilder you can have a beautiful website up and running in minutes. With video capability, image editing software and membership plugins, you can easily optimise it for your sports club, keeping your fans happy and your players engaged! Try out our 14-day free trial today.