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.
No comments:
Post a Comment