by Chris Syme, crisis/social communications strategist via
cksyme.com Follow Syme on Twitter (
@cksyme)
Adam Ledyard is the Director of Sports Information at East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, Texas (DIII). Recently he supervised a website
rebrand that was inspired by the look and feel of Division I schools. Ledyard has a reputation for thinking big in a small school environment and his latest accomplishment at ETBU reflects that innovative thinking. He will be a presenter at the upcoming Q1 Sports Fan Engagement Conference in Kansas City March 2-3. Thanks to Adam for sharing the strategy behind their new athletic department website.
Tell us about the process you went through to plan your website rebrand? (see the new website here)
It started almost a year ago at the Q1Sports Fan Engagement forum in Dallas, Texas, when I heard speakers talk about branding on their websites and the future of athletic websites. I really enjoyed Russell Houghtaling’s (Oklahoma Sooners) talk on his redesign at Washington and then Oklahoma and his thinking behind the design. At that point I was sold on branding as an athletic website strategy instead of a more traditional news website.
After the forum, I started looking at Fortune 500 companies that were changing their look, and top website designs that others recommended to get ideas from. Over the summer I drew up a sketch of what I wanted the new site to look like for our provider and then over the next four months we worked on the idea – good and bad – about how to make it work. In the process, I included my Athletic Director and a couple of my coaches that were up to date in the sports world with social media and branding and understood what I wanted to do. I would show them what we were doing and would receive feed back from them.
When you say your website is designed around branding and not news, can you give us some examples that illustrate that?
My first step was creating branded fonts for the item categories on the main pages so people will see our font and recognize us as ETBU.
We will still have some basics like news stories, schedule, and roster, coaches but the main focus is on our facilities, players, and the items we do to promote ETBU athletics
ETBU Connect (link). This section will feature anything we have to connect ETBU fans with our site, players, and each other. They can go here and see what we do on a daily to weekly basis for ETBU athletics.
ETBU Fan Vote (link). This section is a fan engagement section with a weekly vote on Facebook. When a fan votes and shares on Facebook we are getting our brand out on their page and in return they have fun voting for their favorite team or event that week.
What We Wear (link). This is one of my favorite sections as we show off what our teams wear for practice, home games, away games, and warm ups. As a small school if we can show we are classy in what we wear and have cool items to wear I believe that helps in the recruiting process. If a recruit can see you have some great items that they will receive as a part of your team that can only help you out.
ETBU Extra. This is our weekly coaches show at CiCi’s Pizza and features a coach and player. We record it and put it up on YouTube and air it live over our Sports Net during the hour we are on on Wednesday’s from 12-1 p.m. We showcase our athletes on it to show how they came to ETBU, why they like ETBU and their coaches, and about being a NCAA Division III athlete.
Facilities (link). I found a virtual tour company out of Oklahoma that did great work with college design and had them come up and do virtual tours of our athletic facilities. I feel that seeing a tour like this is much better than just a blah pic of a facility. It shows what we have here and for football the crowds we draw for home events and tailgating.
How did you decide on the architecture for your new website—what was top priority, etc?
I borrowed pieced of the design from some of the top websites in the business world and many of the same concepts of design from Oklahoma and Arkansas. The top priority was big pictures and a clean product. I really liked the box concept with social media included in it. I wanted our front page to be a one-stop shop for anybody that came to our site and give them a look at what ETBU is about in the short time frame they would be on the website.
Where there any other school websites out there that inspired you? If so, what were they and what impressed you?
There were two that were the main inspiration in the Washington Huskies and Oklahoma Sooners. Both were more branding which I liked. There were bigger pictures and featured their athletes and facilities more. News was not the main attraction.
If you were to give advice to other schools your size about tackling a website redesign, what would you say?
Make sure you have a plan and an idea of where you want it to go. Your web provider may have a different idea than you and try and take it in a different direction. Make sure you know how to use the Abode tools as I did a lot of graphic design on ours. Involve your coaches with the redesign for ideas and what they might like to see in a new site.
Why do you think it is important for small schools to be pursuing best practices in web design?
Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting! Your website is your front door of your athletic department and you really only get one chance on a first impression. You want to sell your best features of your athletics department.
What part does social media play in your new site?
It is a big part in all we do. On the main page it is the second item down on the page with all of our social media outlets. We will be looking into a social media page of its own that has all the feeds in one all together on one page and another pager using a hashtag. You can tweet out or post our facility pages virtual tour any time so people can see your facilities.
What is your favorite element/part of the new design?
It’s hard to say that I have one favorite element. I like that fact that it is responsive and we don’t need a mobile website anymore. I like the big pictures of our players and facilities showing off who we have and what we play in. I really like the What We Wear section as it develops more over time. Showing off what our teams practice in, travel in, play in I believe is a great recruiting tool.
Hear more from Adam on a recent episode of Tuesday Ten with Sunny Cadwallader here.