Top 8 Features Sports Websites Should Have
By now, you probably know that your sports team website is a great way to stay in touch with your fans and keep them posted on your latest victories and league standings. It’s also a great marketing asset that allows you to connect with potential sponsors and donors as well as recruit new team members.
But for your website to be effective and help you achieve those goals, there are a few features you must have on your sports website.
Top 8 Features To Add To Your Sports Website
In this post, we’ll share what features you should have on your sports website if you want it to help you make an impact and ensure your team’s success.
1. Player Galleries Or Lists
Player galleries and lists make it easy for your visitors to immediately see who’s playing on your team. They can also click on individual team player names to access more detailed information about them. This typically includes a player’s bio, team name, the position they’re playing, their nationality, and more.
Player galleries allow you to display photos of your players along with their name. They can click on the gallery to access the list of all players along with relevant information.
A player list, on the other hand, gives an at-a-glance view of team statistics immediately. No matter which option you choose, your visitors will still be able to access individual player information.
2. Player Profiles
Aside from player lists and galleries, you should also include individual player profiles. Be sure to include as much information about each player and not just the statistics.
Add their bio, share their likes and dislikes, and more. You can also include a video interview with a player to make it more personable and interactive.
3. Next Event Countdown
Adding a countdown timer to your next match is a good way to keep your fans updated and build hype long before the match takes place. You can easily add a countdown to your sidebar or even at the top of your website in the header area so it’s immediately visible.
A plugin like SportsPress makes it easy to display a countdown anywhere on your site. You can select a specific match or let the widget display the next match automatically. On top of that, you can go beyond the basic countdown. You can include information about the venue and league so that all the important information is easily accessible.
4. League Tables
Next up on our list of top features your sports website should have is the league table widget. By adding league tables, you can easily share how each team is doing in the league with all the relevant information readily available.
If you’re managing multiple teams, you can choose exactly how many teams should display. You can also customize the league table when it comes to which statistics and the information it will show.
5. Event List
Publishing information about each match is a great way to make it easy for your fans to get an overview of the match. However, the individual match display means they have to go browsing through the archives to find results from previous matches. In some cases, your website visitors might only want to see an overview of past matches and not go through the entire match recap one by one.
Make it easy for them by displaying an event list on your homepage. You can choose between several different layouts which include a calendar, a list, and a block layout. You can also add a header scoreboard like those found on pro sports websites such as the NFL, NBA, and others. This will make it easy to see the latest scores and check out your match reports by clicking the recap and preview links.
6. Tournament Brackets
Give your fans a real treat and display interactive tournament brackets on your website. This is the best way to keep them updated with how your team is progressing through a tournament.
You can quickly set up your future tournament and schedule matches by adding dates, times, and the teams that are participating in the tournament. This feature will automatically create events for you and you can easily update the results after each match.
SportsPress makes it easy to add tournament layouts that support single and double elimination with separate brackets for losers and winners. Another cool feature is that you can easily insert league tables before the tournament bracket to show how each team performed before the tournament.
7. Fixtures And Results
No respectable sports team website would be complete without displaying fixtures and results. After all, your fans want to know how your team did and they are hungry for statistics that they can discuss at length with their friends.
With this information, you can display the address of the venue and a map of its location so your fans can get directions and arrive there without any issues. You can also add a starting lineup and then update the information with a scoring timeline and match statistics after the match.
8. Social Media Profiles, Sharing, And Feeds
Finally, be sure to add the links to your social media profiles to your website. This will make it easier for your website visitors to follow you on their preferred social media platform and stay up to date with your team’s news.
Social sharing buttons will make it easy for your followers and fans to share your content which will drive more traffic to your website and put you in front of a new audience.
You can take this a step further and incorporate your Twitter, Instagram or Facebook feed so they can see the type of content you’re sharing before they follow you.
There are numerous WordPress plugins that make it easy to add these features to your website. From dedicated social media follow and share plugins like Social Media Follow Buttons Bar and Super Socializer plugin to simple social media feeds plugins like Custom Twitter Feeds and Social Slider Widget for Instagram, you can easily make your site more interactive.
Final Thoughts
The features on this list are the absolute must haves for your website. They will keep your visitors informed and provide them with an instant overview of important information about your team.
Luckily SportsPress makes it easy to add them to your site so be sure to take advantage of all its features. Don’t forget to download our cheat sheet that lists out all of these features so you can keep it handy as you’re updating your site.
