For many of our sports, the conclusion of the 2012 season represents a fantastic time and opportunity for your club, league or association to update – or even upgrade - your website. 

Upgrading from a Standard site to an Advanced site is a fantastic option for any organisations wishing to improve the site content and functionality of your site, – just as many associations and clubs have done in the past 12-18 months. 

SportingPulse Advanced websites are custom-built in consultation with your organisation, and provide a great middle-tier solution between our Standard (free) sites and our high-end Elite sites. 

Banyule Junior Football Club, an AFL club playing in Victoria’s Yarra Junior Football League, is a good example of a  club who has recently upgraded to an Advanced site with great results thus far. 

“Having used the standard SportingPulse site for awhile, the Banyule Junior Football Club Committee wanted to upgrade our website to better enable communication with our members,” committee member Robin Luber said. 

“By using SportingPulse and moving to an Advanced site we were still able to utilise the in-built functionality of team fixtures, results and ladders, but with the added benefits of having a layout that was both visually pleasing but also being able to pack much more content onto the home page than ever before. 

“The guys at SportingPulse supported us along the way and gave us great guidance having been through this previously with other clients. We would certainly recommend the advanced site option for any club wishing to upgrade their website.”

If you are interested in finding out more information about purchasing an Advanced website, or upgrading your free Standard website to a Advanced site, get in touch with our Sales team.

Of course if now isn’t the time for an upgrade,  there are many additional things administrators of Standard or Advanced sites can do right now to enhance your site’s appearance and functionality. Check out the following handy tips and get the best from your website today.:

1. Update your organisation’s contact details

Like most grassroots sports organisations, key personnel inevitably move on from year to year – or sometimes they stay on forever! Ensure that visitors to your site have the most up-to-date contact details for your committee members, coaches, secretaries and other important people by keeping these details up to date. We’d recommend using a Contact Details section on your site to house this info. 

2. Add your logo

The majority of sporting clubs, leagues and associations have their own logo. And why not? A logo represents a massively important tool for the way your organisation is branded to your members and the general public. Don’t forget to add your logo to your site so as to ensure it gets maximum exposure when users are clicking around your site and through competition fixtures and results. 

3. Ensure your important event and re-registration dates are publicised

Even if your season might have come to an end, users of your website are still likely to visit your site in the off-season in order to find out details of key events or when registration will re-open again for the following season. Who knows, new players might also be scouring your site to see if it’s an attractive place to join! Why not use a noticeboard widget to help put these important details front and centre…

4. Consider adding a custom header

Custom headers cannot be added in by users at this point in time via the CMS, but here at SportingPulse we are very encouraging for any organisations wishing to enhance their website through the use of a custom header. So much so, that if you send it through to us we’ll upload it on your behalf absolutely free. More details, including size and format requirements, can be found here. 

5. Add a remote content feed widget

One fantastic way to keep your website news content refreshed and current during your off-season – without even needing to lift a finger – is to add a remote content feed widget to your site. For example if you are a local basketball club, you can easily display a news feed from Basketball Australia which will automatically update and display their most recent news. 

6. Get Social with Facebook, Twitter & YouTube

If your organisation has recently ventured into the brave new world of social media, then you should certainly be looking to use these platforms to increase your promotion. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all free and easy mediums on which many of your members would be active participants, so why not use them to your advantage to help spread your messages. Find out how you can add a social media widget to your website, or read more about our YouTube partnership to see how you can maximise the use of video technology. 

For assistance with your website’s spring clean, please contact our support team today.