In this week's blog post, professor Leonard said we could stick with subject matter we are familiar with and analyze the changes a favorite website of ours has made over the years. I love baseball. Mostly the minor leagues so I'll be evaluating BaseballAmerica.com.
Founded by Allan Simpson in 1980, Baseball America began as one of the top baseball-only print publications and has grown into a full-service media company.
According to Internet Archive Wayback Machine, BA kicked off their web version on January 25, 1999. With only a simple home page and no clickable links, BA's only content was a message promising readers content that only BA can provide, and they delivered on that promise. But it hasn't always been pretty as you can see here.
With early April marking opening pitch of the baseball season, BA finally launched an operational website. WaybackMachine tabbed April 29th, 1999 and what you see is quite elementary.
2007 saw the first color scheme change and I have to say, as an avid reader of this website, the change was very welcome. Going from green and gold, BA switched to powder blue. BA also made their first drastic format change. Listing the site ID at the top right with site sections now listed horizontally, this left more space underneath for features that were given more bold headers with the perfect amount of white space in between. Over the next eight years BA remained steady with their look despite adding ad revenue visuals and links to their site.
In 2014, BA made another format change which made navigation even easier with their sections having a three-dimensional-like appearance. 2016 saw another format change. Almost in block-like fashion, BA's transition from 1999's all editorial/no imagery to their current product is a complete 180 degrees. Imagery fills the page with little to no script at all other than headlines while the center of the homepage automatically scrolls so the reader doesn't have to. This works perfectly for today's reader. BA is using their reliability, sustainability and mixed it with nearly click-bait style headlines to help the reader dive into content, allowing them to spend endless amounts of time on their site.
At the left are the site sections and right side bar listing all the features. Many tools one visiting the website would fine useful such as Scoreboard, Features (which guide you you draft previews and top prospect lists) as well as an online store and a Help menu. Basic stuff. One thing not clearly present was photos, but a lot of editorial content.
As BA moved on through the 2000s, readers saw a steady incline in imagery and wider variety of content. As I clicked through each season listed on WaybackMachine, 2006 appeared to be the year BA made their next leap in aesthetic (and editorial) improvements.
Not only did BA add more vivid imagery, but added features such as league and player rankings, individual and team stats and top off-season stories far exceeded readers expectations.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
The Ripple Effect
From the day I decided to go back to college, I've had one strict goal in mind:
Earn my degree to back up my work.
In case you don't know, (as some people in class do) a great friend of mine and myself run our own website called UTRMinors.com, a niche website that focuses on low-level minor league baseball players that don't get the attention we feel they deserve.
I'm not going to lie. The website leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically. At the same time however, the service we offer is one-of-a-kind. During our last class I asked professor Leonard a question about search engine optimization and the power of keyword searching. Upon doing so, I immediately did a keyword search of my website. I typed "under the radar minors", "UTR", "under the radar minor league baseball players." Even I admit that I was surprised by the results. We ranked 1st, 9th and 4th respectively using those three keyword phrases. So, how does such a niche site that looks amatuerish at best have rather high SEO? I'm no expert, but I'm going to do the best I can to try and figure it out.
My first idea: Our website offers a one-of-a-kind stat service.
Every player you read about on our website has passed through our own self-created metrics. Metrics that have been tested over and over again since 2009. Metrics that were developed strictly to make it easier for fantasy baseball participants to find the next wave of great players. Metrics that we ourselves claim to have only scratched the surface of what they can do and who they can be applied to.
My second idea: Our fan base cares less about aesthetics and more about the numbers.
I'm not going to say our fans don't give a shit about the way our website looks. Of course they do, but when a reader is looking for something specific and they know where to find it, the beauty isn't as important as the priority. I mean, isn't that the principle behind the "dive bar?" It doesn't look appealing, but the cheap drinks and loud music are what gets people there.
My third idea: The experience behind the work.
Between Jim and myself, we bring over 30 years of fantasy baseball experience to the table. With the popularity of daily fantasy leagues rapidly on the rise, it puts a slight dent in the appeal of dynasty leagues. These are the days of immediate satisfaction, but there are still millions of diehards who find lifetime dynasty leagues the way to go. You build something from the ground up, and with minor leagues playing a bigger and bigger part in said leagues, people want to go to a trusted source, and sometimes the most trusted sources don't always mean they're the most popular or most well-known.
Now, it might seem that I'm taking this staunch approach when referencing our current product. Sure, I have the utmost faith in the numbers we apply and the players we promote. Several players we bought into years and years ago (that no one gave a glancing look at) are now stars at the major league level. Kudos to us right? No. We just do what we do, we love what we do and just so happen to have solid SEOs to back it up.
But I'm taking this course to take what I believe is an already good service and want to take it up not just one notch, but 10, 20, 100, 500 more notches. I want the website to appeal to everyone, not just those baseball stat heads like myself. I want to appeal to a mass audience, not stay within the niche community. The service we currently provide is simply applied to minor league players. We haven't begun to sniff the major leagues yet. This is all part of a plan. We want to take a pure grassroots approach, and when we're ready to take the visual appeal of our website to the next level, we bring with us the tried and tested metric side, and most importantly, a loyal fan base, with us.
Some would say that it's selling out to the masses. No, it isn't.
It's buying in to ourselves.
Earn my degree to back up my work.
In case you don't know, (as some people in class do) a great friend of mine and myself run our own website called UTRMinors.com, a niche website that focuses on low-level minor league baseball players that don't get the attention we feel they deserve.
I'm not going to lie. The website leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically. At the same time however, the service we offer is one-of-a-kind. During our last class I asked professor Leonard a question about search engine optimization and the power of keyword searching. Upon doing so, I immediately did a keyword search of my website. I typed "under the radar minors", "UTR", "under the radar minor league baseball players." Even I admit that I was surprised by the results. We ranked 1st, 9th and 4th respectively using those three keyword phrases. So, how does such a niche site that looks amatuerish at best have rather high SEO? I'm no expert, but I'm going to do the best I can to try and figure it out.
My first idea: Our website offers a one-of-a-kind stat service.
Every player you read about on our website has passed through our own self-created metrics. Metrics that have been tested over and over again since 2009. Metrics that were developed strictly to make it easier for fantasy baseball participants to find the next wave of great players. Metrics that we ourselves claim to have only scratched the surface of what they can do and who they can be applied to.
My second idea: Our fan base cares less about aesthetics and more about the numbers.
I'm not going to say our fans don't give a shit about the way our website looks. Of course they do, but when a reader is looking for something specific and they know where to find it, the beauty isn't as important as the priority. I mean, isn't that the principle behind the "dive bar?" It doesn't look appealing, but the cheap drinks and loud music are what gets people there.
My third idea: The experience behind the work.
Between Jim and myself, we bring over 30 years of fantasy baseball experience to the table. With the popularity of daily fantasy leagues rapidly on the rise, it puts a slight dent in the appeal of dynasty leagues. These are the days of immediate satisfaction, but there are still millions of diehards who find lifetime dynasty leagues the way to go. You build something from the ground up, and with minor leagues playing a bigger and bigger part in said leagues, people want to go to a trusted source, and sometimes the most trusted sources don't always mean they're the most popular or most well-known.
Now, it might seem that I'm taking this staunch approach when referencing our current product. Sure, I have the utmost faith in the numbers we apply and the players we promote. Several players we bought into years and years ago (that no one gave a glancing look at) are now stars at the major league level. Kudos to us right? No. We just do what we do, we love what we do and just so happen to have solid SEOs to back it up.
But I'm taking this course to take what I believe is an already good service and want to take it up not just one notch, but 10, 20, 100, 500 more notches. I want the website to appeal to everyone, not just those baseball stat heads like myself. I want to appeal to a mass audience, not stay within the niche community. The service we currently provide is simply applied to minor league players. We haven't begun to sniff the major leagues yet. This is all part of a plan. We want to take a pure grassroots approach, and when we're ready to take the visual appeal of our website to the next level, we bring with us the tried and tested metric side, and most importantly, a loyal fan base, with us.
Some would say that it's selling out to the masses. No, it isn't.
It's buying in to ourselves.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Fashion Over Fit
First and foremost, thanks for reading my first class blog installment. So far our Web Publication & Design class seems like it will be a lot of fun, which makes for a great learning environment.
Let me begin by sharing a very short lesson I learned from my wife, a podiatrist, that quickly sums up her approach to long lasting foot health.
"Fit before fashion."
In her profession, fit over fashion primarily means practicality and comfort wins over aesthetics.
Since becoming a Rochester-based podiatrist several years ago, she's driven home the message that walking and running in comfortable shoes is the key to good long term foot health. Just because the highest stilettos look flashy and stylish or those expensive running shoes in Nike's latest ad campaign look awesome, doesn't mean they're right for you. If they make your feet hurt, what are they truly worth?
She does understand, however, that compromise is the key. She works hard to ensure that her patients (and our family) wear shoes that check off both the fit and the fashion portions of her podiatric checklist. Her goal is to make sure those she advises don't have to sacrifice fashion if she can establish the proper fit.
You have to achieve both fit and fashion in order for the customer and distributor to be happy. I feel the same about web design. You have to grab the reader with fashion (design) then keep them there with the fit (the content.)
Take mine and my partner's website UTRMinors.com for example.
Using Wordpress, it's clean, basic design is practical. It possesses the fundamental elements we discussed in class last Thursday when comparing newspaper and tabloids to well designed websites: A banner, headlines, easy to find links, a side-bar listing recently published stories, recent Twitter posts and repetitive formatting. All of this makes our daily posts easy to follow.
For the hardcore saber metric enthusiast, the willingness to look past the vanilla aesthetic makes the site work. That's based solely on the fact, however, that my partner and I have created a one-of-a-kind stat service for our readers. But, I confess. What you see isn't nearly enough to immediately grab and engage the casual baseball audience unless you've been referred to the site based on the content alone.
We are, in essence, a pair of Birkenstocks. We have perfect fit, but not enough fashion.
When it's all said and done, I'd love our website design to closely resemble BaseballAmerica.com.
Aside from the fact that their content is second to none in the industry, it's soft color texture, story alignment and proximity of pictures versus text forces the reader to stay on the page. The side bar links are not overbearing and their use of white space provides the perfect amount of separation to where the reader does not get instantaneously bored.
Let me begin by sharing a very short lesson I learned from my wife, a podiatrist, that quickly sums up her approach to long lasting foot health.
"Fit before fashion."
In her profession, fit over fashion primarily means practicality and comfort wins over aesthetics.
Since becoming a Rochester-based podiatrist several years ago, she's driven home the message that walking and running in comfortable shoes is the key to good long term foot health. Just because the highest stilettos look flashy and stylish or those expensive running shoes in Nike's latest ad campaign look awesome, doesn't mean they're right for you. If they make your feet hurt, what are they truly worth?
She does understand, however, that compromise is the key. She works hard to ensure that her patients (and our family) wear shoes that check off both the fit and the fashion portions of her podiatric checklist. Her goal is to make sure those she advises don't have to sacrifice fashion if she can establish the proper fit.
You have to achieve both fit and fashion in order for the customer and distributor to be happy. I feel the same about web design. You have to grab the reader with fashion (design) then keep them there with the fit (the content.)
Take mine and my partner's website UTRMinors.com for example.
Using Wordpress, it's clean, basic design is practical. It possesses the fundamental elements we discussed in class last Thursday when comparing newspaper and tabloids to well designed websites: A banner, headlines, easy to find links, a side-bar listing recently published stories, recent Twitter posts and repetitive formatting. All of this makes our daily posts easy to follow.
For the hardcore saber metric enthusiast, the willingness to look past the vanilla aesthetic makes the site work. That's based solely on the fact, however, that my partner and I have created a one-of-a-kind stat service for our readers. But, I confess. What you see isn't nearly enough to immediately grab and engage the casual baseball audience unless you've been referred to the site based on the content alone.
We are, in essence, a pair of Birkenstocks. We have perfect fit, but not enough fashion.
When it's all said and done, I'd love our website design to closely resemble BaseballAmerica.com.
Aside from the fact that their content is second to none in the industry, it's soft color texture, story alignment and proximity of pictures versus text forces the reader to stay on the page. The side bar links are not overbearing and their use of white space provides the perfect amount of separation to where the reader does not get instantaneously bored.
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