New AFL site (suggestions, complaints and compliments)

[seanoff]

The AFL site is the WORST corporate website I have ever visited, if it wasn't for gameday live i'd never go there and even that has its issues ie it doesn't auto update (for me anyway)

Its unstable

It requires IE, seriously what ****wit was responsible for this. FIRE THEM People use Firefox, Opera, Safari etc too.

It takes an age to load on my 8MB link when it declines to work

The information is flaky (get a proper content mgt system or learn to use the one you've got or employ someone who can PLEASE)

Have a HTML only option, those of us who don't need flash to wow us can get a faster version of it. Also a mobile version would be nice


START AGAIN and DO IT PROPERLY

Visit NFL.com or Microsoft, or Google or any other site on the web. Most myspace pages are better and that's a damning phrase.


PIECE OF SH!T

Sean
M E-commerce (yes really)

 

[sldavey]

I know! As you can see 2dp is needed as Collingwood > St Kilda by 0.02%.

Whoever you are at RealFooty (it could be Rohan cos I emailed him this morning), you're a champ

Although there's still this:

Unable to determine if or how afl.com.au is progressing though.

Hi,

We are also moving to increase the % on the ladder to show two decimal points and it should be up this week.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[dont bowl there]

Hi,

We are also moving to increase the % on the ladder to show two decimal points and it should be up this week.

Cheers,
Sandy

Only took 5 rounds but thanks for that.

 

[PumpyChowdown]

Poor ol' sldavey....

Just take away the d and....well....

 

[sldavey]

Is there anyway we can have a link on the site to the radio stations covering the live games that isn't in 'game day live'?
Game day live crashes my system every time I close it! And I can't see all the stats even when I have no choice but to open it. Why should I have to change the screen resolution to view it? Why can't you provide this service so everyone can get the information no matter what what resolution we use?

I've never come across a site that takes longer to load. My mate (not a BF member) insists he can download pr0n quicker than he can view the AFL site.

The AFL website used to be the 1st place I'd go when I wanted information. Now I ONLY EVER use it as a LAST RESORT.

Whoever is in charge of the site's development needs to listen to what people here are saying, swallow their pride and admit they've got it wrong, and fix it now before it's too late. Respect will come if you give the site users what they really want and need.
Pay attention!

Until then I'll keep my eye on the forums, unofficial AFL sites and news sites for all my AFL info.

Hi SausageRoll,

There are separate links now to just audio if you don't want to use GameDayLive.

Not sure why your browser is crashing ... and it's a bit hard for me to help without knowing the circumstances that might be causing the crash.

Page weight is being worked on. It's definitely heavier than I personally would like to see, though there's a large discrepancy in size across many news and sports sites. I've seen some up around the 1MB mark and lots down around the 200k mark. Rest assured though, I'm asking for a crash diet for afl.com.au!

Regarding your last paragraph, perhaps you could scour this forum for posts by me. It'd be helpful before suggesting that we're not listening, not acknowledging problems, or that we aren't trying to deliver upon the myriad requests that come in from fans.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[dont bowl there]

Sandy you said before that a HTML stats option would be available, when do you see this happening?

Thanks

 

[sldavey]

sldavey, thanks for “valuing our feedback”.

I have issues with the AFL site like others who have written to you. Mine aren’t technical, they’re design related. I wonder if readers of this post will agree with me – please post if you do, or don’t!

I appreciate the website is being developed and constructed in NSW and I therefore assume some people who are working on it probably have little or no history of Australian Rules (disturbing to say the least – dumb, if this is so).

Anyway, permit me to make a few suggestions about the presentation of the Ladder(s) on the site. Not about positioning on the front page (although I find this questionable), more specifically, the fine detail in the ladder(s).

Can you instruct the 'developers' of the site to be consistent when it comes to the naming (descriptions and titles) of the Australian Football League clubs? My bottom line is this; please spell out the AFL Club names in ladders on the site. Am I being pedantic, I hope not? I’ll try to explain…

If I was from Mars, (some think I am) or a young kid, or simply AFL curious I may not have a clue what i.e. 'ADE' stands for or what 'GEE' does on the front page ladder, so, I'd probably click the 'Full Ladder' button. When I do this, I get a completely different language. For example, 'ADE' becomes 'CROWS' and 'GEE' becomes 'CATS' – no connection to the acronyms, no connection to team colour.

How about spelling the AFL club names formally, in all instances in ladders?

Adelaide, Geelong, Collingwood, Brisbane, Port Adelaide, Hawthorn and all the other club names are beautiful and have real history. They belong to people, places and communities, the monikers on the ‘Full Ladder’ don’t. They’re nicknames.

PS. Please add at least two decimal points to the club percentages in the full ladder. I’m sure many people miss this detail from the previous AFL site

PPS. Reluctantly, I’ve had to install Firefox to view the new website without glitches – it works in this browser.

Hi Linda,

Thanks for your thoughts, let me address them.

Firstly, the site is designed, and content created and maintained, by Melbourne companies. AAP is the only Sydney company that provides content onto AFL.com.au. General content, editorial, stats, design, UI, video programs (eg GameDayNews Desk, Best Marks, Best Goals) are all done by Melbourne companies.

Only the guts are built in Sydney. There's a bit of misinformation flying around about C4. They do the CMS, application layers, the feeds, etc). They aren't the designers and they don't do any of the editorial.

The site is hosted in Qld in WebCentral's data hosting environment.

I'm with you on consistency of the club names. There's acronyms, nicknames and fullnames. I've asked the Team to settle on one standard and for that to apply across afl.com.au and all club sites.

Two decimal points have been added in tonight, will be approved hopefully tomorrow and up tomorrow arvo or this weekend.

Firefox and IE are the browsers this site is built for.

Best
Sandy

 

[sldavey]

Sandy you said before that a HTML stats option would be available, when do you see this happening?

Thanks

Hey don'tbowlthere,

Do you mean "simple live scores on a simple HTML page" or do you mean actual stats post the game?

If you mean the former, aiming for 10 May (don't quote me ... I've got a gazillion dates in my head and I don't have the schedule in front of me).

Is that what you meant?

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[dont bowl there]

Hey don'tbowlthere,

Do you mean "simple live scores on a simple HTML page" or do you mean actual stats post the game?

If you mean the former, aiming for 10 May (don't quote me ... I've got a gazillion dates in my head and I don't have the schedule in front of me).

Is that what you meant?

Cheers,
Sandy

Yeah i meant live HTML stats like the ones from previous years. Thanks for the reply.

 

[VanBerlo=God]

Hey don'tbowlthere,

Do you mean "simple live scores on a simple HTML page" or do you mean actual stats post the game?

If you mean the former, aiming for 10 May (don't quote me ... I've got a gazillion dates in my head and I don't have the schedule in front of me).

Is that what you meant?

Cheers,
Sandy

when is the release date on a properly functioning website sandy?

its almost round 5, and the website just keeps getting worse

 

[Paddywhackers]

Watching the replays on the afl site.

I am currently overseas, and I desperately want to watch the reply of the Collingwood V Essendon game where we won but should have won by ten goals. (It should have been a percantage booster) Anyway, does anyone know the link where I can watch the replay. Thanks, Paddywackers.

 

[paulg99]

Thanks Sandy, for bearing with us, you must be made of fire ******ant material for all the flaming that you are copping so good naturedly. It is good to see someone like yourself being proactive in doing some market research on the job that the AFL's site is doing.

Certainly it is better than some of the treatment that I have received from Telstra when complaining about the match video replay service. When it is good, it is excellent, but too often it is appalling. Let's just look at this season so far, where I have experienced games with no audio, missing quarters, missing starts of the quarters, vision of the wrong game, even the wrong sport - I have selected some quarters and ended up watching golf or motor racing.

But let's just focus on the last week, and this is not comprehensive, because I don't look at every quarter of every game:

Coll v Port: all four quarters included ads from Aussie TV. The sound and the video were out of synch by 2 seconds (made the commentators look like geniuses as they predicted everything that was going to happen)

Adelaide v Sydney: Though the site claims the game is available, nothing happens when you click on the links for Q1 and Q2. This was happening as late as yesterday.

Kangaroos v Lions: Q1 and Q2 - video would cut out and jump to another random game, e.g. the 2004 Grand Final and ironically Q1 of the Adelaide v Sydney game!

Essendon v Collingwood: Though the site claims the game is available, nothing happened when you click on the links for Q3 but a message that the video is not currently available. Then it eventually goes to a post match interview with one of the winning team's players. So much for keeping the result secret.

I see that quality control is the big issue here. Whoever puts these games up obviously doesn't check that they are working OK, and we customers are probably just fed up with complaining fruitlessly. There is no easy way to just click on a link to say: hey this replay isn't working.

If a bunch of amateurs can do a great job with bittorrents in getting us the games, why can't the people we pay through our subscription to the AFL and our shareholding in Telstra?

thanks for your indulgence

Paul

 

[red+black]

he said r....., aah never mind.

 

[sldavey]

Hi,

We are also moving to increase the % on the ladder to show two decimal points and it should be up this week.

Cheers,
Sandy

Hey all,

We've changed the ladder to present the % with two decimal points.

This came up yesterday.

http://afl.com.au/Season2007/Ladder/tabid/74/Default.aspx

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[sldavey]

Thanks Sandy, for bearing with us, you must be made of fire ******ant material for all the flaming that you are copping so good naturedly. It is good to see someone like yourself being proactive in doing some market research on the job that the AFL's site is doing.

Certainly it is better than some of the treatment that I have received from Telstra when complaining about the match video replay service. When it is good, it is excellent, but too often it is appalling. Let's just look at this season so far, where I have experienced games with no audio, missing quarters, missing starts of the quarters, vision of the wrong game, even the wrong sport - I have selected some quarters and ended up watching golf or motor racing.

But let's just focus on the last week, and this is not comprehensive, because I don't look at every quarter of every game:

Coll v Port: all four quarters included ads from Aussie TV. The sound and the video were out of synch by 2 seconds (made the commentators look like geniuses as they predicted everything that was going to happen)

Adelaide v Sydney: Though the site claims the game is available, nothing happens when you click on the links for Q1 and Q2. This was happening as late as yesterday.

Kangaroos v Lions: Q1 and Q2 - video would cut out and jump to another random game, e.g. the 2004 Grand Final and ironically Q1 of the Adelaide v Sydney game!

Essendon v Collingwood: Though the site claims the game is available, nothing happened when you click on the links for Q3 but a message that the video is not currently available. Then it eventually goes to a post match interview with one of the winning team's players. So much for keeping the result secret.

I see that quality control is the big issue here. Whoever puts these games up obviously doesn't check that they are working OK, and we customers are probably just fed up with complaining fruitlessly. There is no easy way to just click on a link to say: hey this replay isn't working.

If a bunch of amateurs can do a great job with bittorrents in getting us the games, why can't the people we pay through our subscription to the AFL and our shareholding in Telstra?

thanks for your indulgence

Paul

Hi Paul,

Coming from V8 Supercars and the amount of video we did on that site when I was the EP, and do now, I'm really disappointed with your review.

I take video very seriously and am shocked to hear your experience has been that bad.

I will do a review this weekend and come back to you next week with a formal response.

I guess I'm kinda extra disappointed because we haven't changed video content providers ... the same companies have been doing this for years so I need to do some detailed investigation to see why we are having these sorts of problems. We certainly don't have the same problems with nrl or supercars video.

Expect a response from me early next week.

Best
Sandy

 

[websurfing]

More problems with Game Day Live.

The link for 3AW has been incorrectly patched to MMM.

Please get some people to re-build this site who have a clue on what they're doing.

WS

 

[sldavey]

More problems with Game Day Live.

The link for 3AW has been incorrectly patched to MMM.

Please get some people to re-build this site who have a clue on what they're doing.

WS

Hi WebSurfing,

For the live audio for GameDayLive, we take a XML feed from ChampionData and they currently have 3AW listed even though they're actually sending through a MMM stream. That's why you're seeing 3AW instead of MMM in GameDayLive as an audio option.

It's being changed by ChampionData, as we speak. (I've checked it and it's changed to MMM.)

There's no downside here. You've got three feeds to choose from and the entire application works. Yes the content provider got the radio station name wrong name but the entire app works.

Mate, it's a bit of a stretch for you to say the site needs to be rebuilt when what you're actually referring to is a small human error from ChampionData who have accidently got the radio station name wrong.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[websurfing]

With all due respect Sandy, the AFL website is a load of crap (70 pages in this topic should give you a hint).

The fact that attention to detail is so poor is further evidence that the people currently responsible for the website should be given the boot.

You would think that after the bollocking whoever has "built" the AFL site (and I use that term VERY loosely) has received, that you would want to make sure that you get things right, irrespective of how big or small.

Quality checking / proof reading appear to be foreign terms.

The fact that 5 rounds in and there's STILL issues is an indictment.

WS

 

[sldavey]

With all due respect Sandy, the AFL website is a load of crap (70 pages in this topic should give you a hint).

The fact that attention to detail is so poor is further evidence that the people currently responsible for the website should be given the boot.

You would think that after the bollocking whoever has "built" the AFL site (and I use that term VERY loosely) has received, that you would want to make sure that you get things right, irrespective of how big or small.

Quality checking / proof reading appear to be foreign terms.

The fact that 5 rounds in and there's STILL issues is an indictment.

WS

WS,

On the "quality/proof reading", I concur, and I will give a bollocking to those people.

I'm a fraction stuck with a couple of providers though because we don't have SLA's in place (service level agreements). The reason we don't is that they are agreements between the provider and the AFL not between us and the provider. But I will take it up with both parties and continue to seek 100% effort from all external providers.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[Hawkers]

WS,

On the "quality/proof reading", I concur, and I will give a bollocking to those people.

I'm a fraction stuck with a couple of providers though because we don't have SLA's in place (service level agreements). The reason we don't is that they are agreements between the provider and the AFL not between us and the provider. But I will take it up with both parties and continue to seek 100% effort from all external providers.

Cheers,
Sandy

Hahaha, this makes me laugh...or cry, I can't decide. It just shows that the AFL are interested in the money they can' get for the game without making sure proper procedures are in place for quality delivery of the content they have sold

Seriously, you don't sell your product to a company that can't deliver it effectively without having any SLA's in place; that is just plain bad business.

If football wasn't the best game in the world everyone would have tuned out years ago with these amatuers in charge

And while I think of it sldavey, how are the KPI's stacking up?

 

[sldavey]

Hahaha, this makes me laugh...or cry, I can't decide. It just shows that the AFL are interested in the money they can' get for the game without making sure proper procedures are in place for quality delivery of the content they have sold

Seriously, you don't sell your product to a company that can't deliver it effectively without having any SLA's in place; that is just plain bad business.

If football wasn't the best game in the world everyone would have tuned out years ago with these amatuers in charge.

And while I think of it sldavey, how are the KPI's stacking up?

Hey Hawkers,

Not sure I can repond to the above comments ...

However when you say KPIs, we measure so many and obviously I'm not at liberty to share them with this group. What I can say is we're up on some basic core measurements like unique visitors, page impressions, video streams, etc. But it's early in the Season isn't it ...

So ... I'm not worried about these metrics. Yet.

You might be being facetious and I'm clearly not getting that but if you're actually interested, ask away. I will try and answer unless it's commercially sensitive in which case I'll retain the right to say no.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[gadj1976]

So ... I'm not worried about these metrics. Yet.

rd22 perhaps - still lots to do so not much time to rest

 

[Hawkers]

Hey Hawkers,

Not sure I can repond to the above comments ...

However when you say KPIs, we measure so many and obviously I'm not at liberty to share them with this group. What I can say is we're up on some basic core measurements like unique visitors, page impressions, video streams, etc. But it's early in the Season isn't it ...

So ... I'm not worried about these metrics. Yet.

You might be being facetious and I'm clearly not getting that but if you're actually interested, ask away. I will try and answer unless it's commercially sensitive in which case I'll retain the right to say no.

Cheers,
Sandy

Thanks for the response Sandy.

Why can't you say what KPI's you measure.? Surely they are just fairly generic; as you say unique vistors, video steams etc
What other indicators could the AFL be asking of you?
Surely the SLA's are of more importance than KPI's?

suppose I'm interested in:
1) Are the AFL are concerned with the feedback they are getting?
2) Are you aware of any overwhelming positive feedback the site has received?
3) Is there any chance that the site will be usuable (I know thats subjective, but you must concede that a majority find it hard to use) soon?
4) Is the site in beta or is this what we're going to have to put up with (minus minor improvements) for the time being?
5) Has the AFL site lost unique hits so far this year compared to years previous?
6) Has content streaming lost unique hits so far this year compared to years previous?
7) Will there be a relaxing of rules to allow non-bigpond customers access to streaming / recorderd content?
8) How come the site hasn't been designed for other browsers other than IE? (This may have been answered before. I use Opera FYI)

I realise they are a few questions but I'm really interested in the answers to 1,4,5,6

Thanks Sandy

 

[VanBerlo=God]

WS,

On the "quality/proof reading", I concur, and I will give a bollocking to those people.

I'm a fraction stuck with a couple of providers though because we don't have SLA's in place (service level agreements). The reason we don't is that they are agreements between the provider and the AFL not between us and the provider. But I will take it up with both parties and continue to seek 100% effort from all external providers.

Cheers,
Sandy

you don't even have an SLA?

whats the point of further development on the website if there isn't an SLA.
You don't have any quality controls or measures, any designated response times, any priority levels, you clearly don't have any backup plans (about 2 weeks ago when your db shit itself).

Sandy, you have a very poorly planned and developed product.
Are you the Project Manager/Co-ordinator? or are you a PR officer?

On a further note, did you have any software requirements documentation? Or was it do it as you go? Something that would be good to know Sandy, to be able to realise that it has been very poor management, or very poorly staffed.
But it all heads back to the PM/PC

 

[peechers]

you don't even have an SLA?

whats the point of further development on the website if there isn't an SLA.
You don't have any quality controls or measures, any designated response times, any priority levels, you clearly don't have any backup plans (about 2 weeks ago when your db shit itself).

Sandy, you have a very poorly planned and developed product.
Are you the Project Manager/Co-ordinator? or are you a PR officer?

On a further note, did you have any software requirements documentation? Or was it do it as you go? Something that would be good to know Sandy, to be able to realise that it has been very poor management, or very poorly staffed.
But it all heads back to the PM/PC

Are you crazy? Heck, they got double digits percentages on the ladder and everything! Yep..thats right DOUBLE...and WE asked for it...firking incredible....
That work experience kid must be going nuts over that little gem