characteristics of sporting event promotion web-sites
Monday, May 14, 2007
By: Herfinda Artanti, Budi Anugrah, Nove Hartanto
Introduction
Web based information system has become popular since they can accommodate many kinds of document formats in one page. One page of web can contain text, pictures, sounds, graphics, maps, movies, and many more. Furthermore, many people can access the web-based information through the Internet from all around the world.
One of web-based information system functionality is as a promotion tool. This is because through web system people who like to promote event, product, or services can reach huge number of user in one time. This method is more effective rather than advertisements on TV, newspaper, or pamphlet.
One obvious example of the use of web site as a promotion tool is done by sport event management. The examples of sporting events that use websites as their promotion tool are Melbourne Grand Prix Formula 1, FINA International Championships, Australian Open Championships, and Cricket World Cup. Those events are held in Melbourne Australia except Cricket World Cup, which is held in the West Indies. Those four websites is for seasonal sporting events, it means that the websites only provide information before and during the events.
Following this, we will evaluate the four sporting event promotion websites, which are www.grandprix.com.au, www.australianopen.com.au, www.melbourne2007.com.au, and www.cricketworldcup.indya.com.
1 Purposes and Targets of the Websites
There are four major aspects that should be answered while evaluating the websites.
1.1 The basic purposes of the websites
The major purpose of the websites as event promotion tools is to provide internet users with information regarding the event. The websites need to have the ability to reach a huge number of audiences all around the world.
The other purposes of those websites are to provide complete information and news regarding the sport event, such as general information about the event, event and match timetable, the venue map, venue information, the match result, the match replay (in Australian open website), information about the athletes and teams, how to buy ticket, and many more.
The other side benefit of the website is that they also promote the venues, cities, and countries where the events are held. They support sport tourism, where people who enjoy the sporting atmosphere when they came to the city.
The websites also have other function to provide the online store and online ticket. It is really helpful for people who live across the country and would like to buy tickets, merchandise, or sporting products. Online catalogues are available for customers to download. The catalogue includes products picture, product materials, sizes, specifications, and prices. User also can buy tickets through online ticketing. Those four websites only provide links to other website if the user wanted to buy ticket. The link is www.ticketek.com.au and www.eticketing.co.uk.
1.2 The website targeted user
There is no particular age as for the targeted users. The websites contain general information and everybody who interesting in this sport are allowed to get access. No gender restriction since the sporting event management likes to attract visitor as much as they can.
The potential users are the particular sport fans. Usually the sport fans will look for the latest news of their favorite sports, and the easiest way is by accessing the official websites.
Stakeholders, official sport committee and business are also as potential users for this site. The officials and business members use the website as their commercial sponsor media. Official sport committee, athletes, team also use website as a media to follow the latest news during the event.
Tourists and internet users are the next target after the potential user above. Tourists can be potential website users if we can attract them by the supporting information about the sport events. For example, the brief promotion boards or pamphlets about the event that consist of website address may persuade tourists or internet users to go to the website, and make plans to visit to the sport venues.
2 Websites assessment based on five web-based key technological capabilities areas
There are five key technological capabilities of web that web-based systems can take advantages of. This section assesses the extent to which these five elements are exploited by the websites in order to accomplish their purposes.
2.1 Connectivity of computers and other digital devices
Connectivity is exploited when there are transactions between two digital devices using computer networks to link to people and resources. Connectivity capability includes aspects related to how users get connected to the websites. (Wikipedia.com).
Users can access the websites by using any kind of digital devices such as desktop PC, laptop, PDA, and mobile phones. The sites can be accessed from home, work, internet café, libraries or computer labs, internet café, etc. The transmission types that users use also varied, from dial-up, broadband ADSL, broadband cable, broadband wireless, satellite broadband, to GPRS.
Since the websites are yearly events’ promotion tools, users access the websites mostly during the events is held. Users may access the website multiple times a day (1-5 times) depends on the information they look for. Websites are expected to be able to hold large amount of users at peak time without slowing their performance. Each user may open 5-20 pages per visit.
Other important aspect in connectivity is the website address. It is important to choose the right words that represent the contents of the website. www.grandprix.com.au, www.australianopen.com.au, and www.cricketworldcup.indya.com are good URLs, because they clearly describe what the website is about. On the other hand, FINA’s website address www.melbourne2007.com.au, may confuse users.
Secure transactions are required for users who want to access the secured portals, such as National Federation members and Accreditation (FINA) and Media (GrandPrix).
2.2 Document linking via hypertext
The four websites have different uses of hypertext applied. www.cricketworldcup.indya.com and www.australianopen.com.au provide more detailed information compared to the other two websites. Cricket website displays long documents as a whole in one page. Conversely, the Australian Open, Grandprix, and FINA’s websites break the documents into smaller pieces in different pages, and use hyperlink for enabling navigations between pages. The way of displaying information affects how users access the information. The more pieces of information in the website, the number of clicks a user need in order to get particular information also increases (Atchison, M., 2007a)..
All websites also have links to external websites, such as www.ticketek.com.au sponsors’ websites, etc.
2.3 Multimedia representation of information
These four website contain multimedia information, which includes images, video, sound, and animation. In order to make the multimedia contents work, users are required to have the required softwares installed (Atchison, M., 2007a). Multimedia requirements and details of each website are as follows:
• www.australianopen.com.au:
Media types:
o Radio: .flash
o Video: flash
Plug-ins: Macromedia Flash Player
• www.cricketworldcup.indya.com:
Media types:
o Video : .wmp
Plug-ins: Windows Media Player 7.0 or higher
Platforms: Windows 2000/2003/XP Home/Pro. No other platforms.
Browsers: IE 6.0 or higher, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or higher.
Users need to login to the Videos portal
• www.grandprix.com.au:
Media types:
o Video: .mov
Plug-ins: Quicktime
• www.melbourne2007.com.au:
Media types:
o Podcasts: .mp4 (need to be saved to the computer)
o Video: .mov
Plug-ins: Quicktime
Download times are depends on how big the file is how fast the data transmission is. Bigger data transmission is preferable. Slower internet access like dial up is not suitable, since it will take a long time to download the files.
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2.4 Document formatting for display and presentation
The attractiveness of the display or formatting of the information is important to the usability of the websites. All the four sites basically have consistent basic formatting and layout approach. They basically use the same template, with frames on the top, left, and right side of each page. Page banners with events’ logos, images, and titles, navigation bars on the centre top and left side of the pages. Text on the top of each page shows paths users taken to reach the current page, so those users know where they are in the website, so that users’ know where they are.
The most recognisable display aspect in the websites is their display theme. Each website’s colours and theme are based on the events’ logo.
www.cricketworldcup.indya.com has a poor display for advertisement. There are too many big advertisements in every page. The other websites have one or two medium-size advertisements in one page, which are acceptable.
2.5 Document formatting for information searching and retrieval
All the four websites basically have the same structure of displaying information. Information are broken up into pieces, and put in different pages. Summary of information are displayed in the front layer of the websites. Users will need to dig in to the website for more detailed information by using the hypertext and menus provided. Parent and child menus help users to know what is available in the website.
www.australianopen.com and www.grandprix.com.au provides search engine for information retrieval. There is a search field positioned on the top side of every page. Results for both search engines are sorted by relevance. www.australianopen.com is pretty interesting. It has ‘tennis ball’ icons next to every search result, showing how accurate the result is. Results with four tennis balls have the highest accuracy rate. Overall the performances of both websites’ search engines are good.
www.melbourne2007.com.au does not have large information. User can explore the contents of the website and search for a particular information by selecting links provided in the menu bar and cross-references in the pages. www.cricketworldcup.indya.com contains a large amount of information, but it has a very detailed menu bar on the left page side that summarises the content of the website clearly. So it is pretty easy for users to find the information they want.
All the five capabilities are important for the success of the websites. But considering the nature and the purpose of the website are connectivity and hypertext are the most important ones. These websites need to be available at any time and able to hold large numbers of users at the same time. The right use of hypertext is also crucial. Since the purpose of events’ websites is to provide information, we do not want our customers confused and lost in the site.
3 Technological key issues
There are some technological key issues that the web developers need to consider in developing websites.
Connectivity aspect has some issues that developers need to pay attention for, such as; different user has different device and has different way to connect to the Internet. Website developers should build website with minimum requirements that can be used by common user or all user with different way to access internet and with any device such as desktop, notebook, PDA, and mobile phone.
Security is also interesting issue. Developer has to make sure that this website is secure or else people will not visit this website.
The next issue is in choosing the website address. It will be better if the user can know the content of the website by their domain name. A bad example is www.melbourne2007.com.au. Internet users may mistakenly think that it was a tourism website. A better choice of name such as www.finamelbourne2007.com may solve the issue. The developer also should take account that at certain time the numbers of end users who access the site may reach its peak. After one match in Australia Open a large number of people may access that site at the same time to get the latest result for the game.
In using hypertext, developers have to make sure that the words chosen for hypertext are not ambiguous so that users can access information faster because they know what kind of information they can get for a particular hypertext. The developer also has to make sure that all links work properly. Developer must aware that too many clicks will make the users frustrated. If they did not like it, they will leave the site.
Hypertext is very helpful for end user but the developer had to make sure that the end user will not get lost or at least they still know in which part they are on that website.
The third issue is multimedia. The developer can enrich the users’ experiences by getting multimedia instead of just plain text. But developers also have to consider several conditions f multimedia on their web site. For example the developer had to make sure that the file size of their multimedia file could create a bad experience of user because of it will decrease their internet access. And have to made sure that the multimedia file is easy accessible for all user they have to considered what kind of plug in that user need to enable them to access that file.
The next issue is document formatting for display. User interface is very important in deign a web, it might be not the most important but it is the first impression of that website for user, it decide that whether the user stay on that website or they will move to another website. According to Jacob Nielsen (Wikipedia.org, 2007), the guru of web usability, there are five key that have to considered in building a web
• Learnability. Web must be easy to learn.
• Rememberability. The web has to be easy to remember
• Efficiency of use. Keep it simple, requires little work to get information that we need
• Reliability in use. The web has works correctly as what the user expect from the system
• User satisfaction. The final key is that users must be satisfied. (Wikipedia.org, 2007)
The last issue is document formatting for information searching and retrieval. There are few things that developers need to consider for this area. The search engines need to be able to return relevant results sorted by relevance. It also have to provide validations if users input misspelled words, and suggestion for similar words. Time is also an important aspect for the search engine’s performance.
4 Advances in the technology for websites improvements
There many advances in technology that can help developers in improving the websites in order to provide users with better systems.
The growth of technology in electronic devices area nowadays, for example ubiquitous computing, makes it possible for end users to access internet and websites from anywhere and at anytime. It will be easier for the developer to market their products.
The use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for HTML displays makes it easier for users to access websites from different devices. Different templates and style sheets are applied to different devices (Atchison, M., 2007a). For example, large text alternative for visually-impaired users or a layout optimized for small displays for mobile phones. A semantic web also could be breakthrough in web technology even it is still considered to be impossible by some people. The idea from Berner Lee to make websites understandable by computer and to make standardization to all websites on the Internet will change the web-based information systems in the future (Atchison, M., 2007c).
5 Conclusions
There are five key technological capabilities of web that web-based systems can take advantages of, which are connectivity, hypertext, multimedia, document formatting for display and presentation, and document formatting for information searching and retrieval. Four sporting event promotion websites were assessed based on these aspects.
In general, the four websites support all the five key capabilities. All the websites can be reached by users easily from anywhere using any devices. Hypertext also plays a big role in information linking and display, with consistent outlook. Two of the websites also has search engines that help the users finding information faster.
However, there are some parts of the websites need to be considered. The first one is regarding the website address name for FINA’s website. The other thing in FINA website is that multimedia was not well supported. GrandPrix website also has poor menu items’ names selections, which sometimes confuses the users. And Cricket World Cup put too many advertisements in one page. These problems can be solved by selecting a better website address and menu item names, as well as display standards.
We cannot judge whether the website is right or wrong, bad or good because every websites has its own purpose and its own way to do it. The important thing we should keep in mind is to develop a website that satisfies its users, which is the one that provides information that can be accessed easily.
References
Atchison, M. (2007a).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 3). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.
Atchison, M. (2007b).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 4). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.
Atchison, M. (2007c).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 5). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.
Connectivity (computer science).(2007). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 14, 2007 from World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Connectivity_%28computer_science%29
http://www.australianopen.com.au
http://www.cricketworldcup.indya.com
http://www.grandprix.com.au
http://www.melbourne2007.com.au
Usability.(2007). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 14, 2007 from World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability
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