Feature: Content, traffic and business models for successful sports websites  

The foundation of any successful sports website is the content writes Purple Interactiveís founder and chief executive Nicole Morris. Without good content, no matter how much promotion the website receives, when people visit the site they wonít come back. Hence the over-used phrase: sticky content. And following on from this, if the content isnít good enough to generate decent traffic there is no point in investing resources in developing business models, because they wonít earn you much money.

10 tips to creating compelling content

1. Breadth first then depth: Unless you deliberately want to run a niche site, to gain the maximum audience share you need to have a broad variety of content rather than very deep content. Depth can come later. Most sites provide news, so to attract a wider audience you will need to have statistics, pictures, good player information, history, community content and a fun section. The key question to ask is: do you have a gap in your content that will encourage site visitors to go to another website to fill the gap? Your aim should be that your site becomes the sold provider of information to a viewer for your sport.
   
2. Segment your audience: Visitors to your site are not all the same, so you need to have something for everyone. A more casual fan is more interested in top level (versus in depth) news and more likely to be interested in fun content rather than in depth statistics. Your serious fan will usually have the opposite interests. Many sites, because they are run by serious fans, have a natural tendency to cater more for the avid visitor. But this is not usually the largest audience segment, though they will be your most regular visitors.
   
3. The content must evolve and be kept fresh: You should be regularly adding new features to the site to keep it fresh. That can range from new mini-features in the statistics you provide to regular video interviews. There are numerous new features you can add constantly. Depending on your budget you should try to add a new feature once every month or two. But they do need to be kept fresh. Try not to have a screensaver just once a year. Have regular competitions.
   
4. Give it to them quickly: This is referring to download speeds. With broadband connections on the rise itís easy to get too relaxed about the size of your pages. One thing that doesnít work well on sports sites is heavy use of Flash - your visitors want their information fast, they donít want to watch a pretty animation. That said, for specific features such as interactive racing tracks and games, Flash is perfect.
   
5. Make sure itís timely: The results need to be up on your website within two minutes from the end of the event. If you canít do that then you donít have the correct systems in place. A single paragraph story about the event should be up within five minutes, a longer one in 15 minutes and the full story later (and less urgent). You need some fresh pictures live within the hour of the end of the event, ideally less. On all the large sites Iíve worked on we had written performance requirements for when each aspect of content needs updating.
   
6. Donít touch the navigation: How people find their way around a website is crucial. If your site has great content but visitors canít find the feature, you have wasted your money developing the content. But crucially navigation is something you need to get right the first time. Once you have regular users, changing the navigation (even if accompanied by a major redesign) will definitely lose you some visitors. Think about how annoying it is looking for something in a supermarket which has completely rearranged its aisles.
   
7. Keep archives of your content: Provided you have decent systems to run your site, the old content is worth keeping. Itís pretty much the cheapest content you can create and it is an added feature on your site. When you buy photographic rights ensure that you have the right to keep the pictures on your site (ideally without extra payment) beyond a year. It is very cool to be able to wonder through a structured archive of photos.
   
8. You canít have enough pictures: Most sports sites donít have enough photos. This does vary from sport to sport and motorsport particularly lends itself to photos. But I am still surprised to see the paucity of photos and photo galleries that appear on soccer sites. It isnít a low cost item because you shouldnít automate the resizing of your photos - it needs to be done by hand. But the fans love them and in terms of sticky content it is probably the single most important feature on a sports website.
   
9. Good statistics: For the serious fan you canít have enough statistics. If you take betting seriously as a business model, a good ëform guideí is crucial. A good statistics system can also populate large areas of your site. Once the system is in place it is cheap to have detailed statistics on particular players performance over time, particular events and locations.
   
10. Great content needs great systems: Content is much more cost effective when you have the right systems in place. Editors and site managers should be focusing on timely delivery of news, photos, statistics and other content. They should not be spending any time on html coding. As an example, for Formula1.com [which was founded by Purple Interactive and subsequently sold to Bernie Ecclestone], we developed a multilingual publishing system. The site editor didnít have time to load 10 stories a day, arriving two or three at a time in five languages. So we developed a system whereby the English stories were automatically e-mailed, with a special security code to the four ëdutyí translators. They would translate the stories and send them back in a pre-formatted layout, including the security code, to a special e-mail address. The system would automatically load the stories into the publishing system and make them live. The editor simply checked regularly that the stories were on the site, and chased the translator if there was too much of a time lag.
    

When I look at sports sites, the top three things that are usually weak are: a lack of fun content such as games and regularly updated screensavers, not enough photos, and thin statistics.
If youíve developed great content and have been going long enough to attract reasonable traffic then you should be making money. Next month weíll examine how.

Nicole Morris is founder and chief executive of website production company Purple Interactive. Her first large scale web development project via Purple was Wimbledon's original website in 1995 - the client was IBM. Her company went on to work on several high profile sports sites with IBM as client: the Masters, Ryder Cup, PGA Championship, US/French/Australian Opens, Paralympics and others. In 1998 Purple incubated www.formula1.com. With no external funding the site was built to a traffic level of 1.2m unique monthly visitors before being sold in early 2002 to Formula One Management.
For some examples of a few of the systems Purple has created, visit www.purplesport.com

This article was seen first by people who receive the monthly newsletter, join them.