• by Christine Champagne , August 21, 2008

The NBA team takes a shot at a site redesign

With their NBA.com site looking outdated, static and in need of an assist, the New Jersey Nets took a shot at a redesign last season. "It had been quite some time since we had done a redesign," says Nets director of marketing Shauna Sikorksi, "and we wanted to improve the functionality, organization and usability of the site, employing some of the different NBA-provided tools, such as our current Top Stories functionality."

While Major League Baseball creates the MLB.com sites for its teams, giving them all the same look and feel, the National Basketball Association gives its teams more freedom, offering a choice of wireframe options and features for individual NBA sites. (It should be noted that this practice could change in the coming months now that Turner Broadcasting System has a hand in the management of the NBA's digital assets.)

With assistance from the NBA, the Nets upgraded their site, creating a portal geared toward a fan base that Nets director of marketing and research Laura Castronova describes as "family-centric." So, while news and stats are a part of the mix, ample real estate is devoted to younger fans, to the Nets Dancers and to the Nets mascot, Sly Fox, which, Castronova says, supports the Nets' tagline, "More than a game."

Sikorski says the site is more balanced now. "In the past, people came to our site, and instead of getting content about our players, they were just bombarded with ticket sales messaging," Sikorski says. "We are a very sales-driven organization, so we are challenged with consistently maintaining a balance between the basketball side - we have a truly a unique situation here, where our basketball team and personnel are very accessible to us - ticket sales messaging and corporate sales branding."

Is the Nets site a slam dunk? OMMA drafted a trio of digital and sports portal experts - Shazamm's Dana Paul (he's a Celtics fan), Digitaria's Jim McArthur (a die-hard Lakers devotee) and DigiKnow's Scott Chapin (a member of the Cavaliers camp) - and put the ball in their court. Game on.

OMMA: What are your first impressions of the Nets site?
Chapin: Overall, it's a very nice site. It's clean and it's easy to navigate. I could find most of the key information that, as a fan, I'd want to be able to find.
McArthur: I'd put it in the top quarter of designs, but it just doesn't do enough to make me want to stay here. I don't find enough here to really care about.
Paul: It's cluttered. It's a barrage of stuff. There is no open space on the page, and there is no "above the fold." The Celtics have their meat and potatoes right above the fold.
McArthur: The navigation bar looks nice. But the whole header itself is an inane and insane use of space. They've made their header approximately 225, 230 pixels tall, and they are unnecessarily shoving things down the page. They could easily have made this header much more svelte.

OMMA: The site incorporates several sponsors.
Paul: It is overwhelming. There isn't anywhere you can go on this site without being bombarded by advertisers.
Chapin: I will say that this site probably has a higher sponsorship level than some of the other team sites, certainly on the home page, but it is a great way for teams and their sponsors to get the word out, and it's much better than banner advertising.

OMMA: Do you find it overwhelming?
Chapin: I don't think it is overload, and I think everyone else is going to get to this point, so they may be ahead of the curve.
McArthur: You can see that they have tried to do things like integrated sponsorship rather than have banner ads everywhere, which, for me, works great. But I think that the list of valued sponsors is a relatively useless gesture.

OMMA: Would you say that the Nets do a good job of pushing ticket sales on this site?
McArthur: Yeah, absolutely. Having [the ticket sales area] just right off the feature area makes sense to me.
Chapin: I think they did a really good job with their ticket information. They have a pretty in-depth set of plans and options, and they're all pretty straightforward and well-explained.

OMMA: The Nets provide a link to their MySpace page. Is that a good way to build community?
McArthur: What they're trying to do is integrate social networking into their fan base. I understand that. The Nets having a MySpace presence isn't a problem. It's what that entails for the fans - you've essentially pushed them off somewhere else.
Paul: I found the whole Web 2.0 component missing. I am amazed the NBA doesn't require teams to have blogs for the fans. They should have somewhere on their sites where, if the team has a five-game losing streak, fans can rant.

OMMA: The Nets have a family-centric fan base. Do you think they do a good job reaching kids with the Nets Kids page?
Paul: The kids site is basically a static HTML page. There's nothing exciting about it.
McArthur: This is a really ham-handed attempt at a kids section. You want to make sure that you skew the content toward a child, but it doesn't have to be framed in the most saccharine way possible.

OMMA: The team mascot, Sly Fox, has his own section, and the videos are pretty funny, especially the "Junkyard Wars" video, where he tries to crush the leprechaun.
Chapin: A lot of these videos are produced for in-arena use, and it's great to repurpose that content on the Web.

OMMA: How would you improve the site?
Paul: I would focus more on that whole above-the-fold thing, and I would clean up the sponsorships. Some of their sponsors are funny. VisitLondon? I don't know how many New Jersey fans are interested in that. It's like they've put sponsors just for the sake of sponsors.
McArthur: I understand the concept of a news-and-information portal for a sports team. That said, there is very little here that has to do with branding of the Nets. I do not feel like I'm at the arena. I do not feel like I'm at a game. To me, that's where a lot of these sports portals get lost.
Chapin: A huge value to sports fans in any of the leagues is making the players approachable and part of the community by giving fans access to players through interactive chats, or submit-your-questions features, or even podcasts with the players. A fan just really wants to be part of the media. We want the same access that someone who has locker-room credentials has, and any way you can create that online is going to get your fans closer to the action.