New AFL site (suggestions, complaints and compliments)

[Alphanumeric]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey all,

GameDayLive Application

• We've changed Pitch to Ground
• We've changed the alphabetical listing of player names to be by last name
• We've changed the format and order of stats to be and include: Kicks, Handballs, Marks, HitOuts, Tackles, Frees For, Frees Against, Goals, Behinds. The data feed that supplies GameDayLive currently doesn't include Possessions so we've this request to the GameDayLive Program of Work.

Sandy

Excellent.

Hey wouldn't it be funny if we found out that Sandy was full of s**t! And he actually was a 13 years that was just pulling out chain.

I would find it funny anyway.

 

[dont bowl there]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Excellent.

Hey wouldn't it be funny if we found out that Sandy was full of s**t! And he actually was a 13 years that was just pulling out chain.

I would find it funny anyway.

Well if the name is correct she is higher up than you think.

 

[Lonie_from_50]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Great development Sandy.

I guess the good news about this is you have a suggestion thread from the main source of afl.com users, and you are actually taking action. This is very rare.

Another thing is that it is good that this was a trial in the NAB Cup and it will be 10 times better by the time the season starts. I guess we all got to just be patient, another month, before having a real dig into what we think.

Appreciate the time you are putting into getting the suggestions into reality.

 

[PHX]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

I dont want to be cluttered. I want an efficient homepage. Like the A-League one. http://www.a-league.com.au/

Or the NHL one. http://www.nhl.com/ Nothing flashy just a site with plenty of info thats useful.

The current Beta site is hopeless. What was wrong with HTML? Flash and "Ajax" overload. Oh and the ads. The ads are in the best spots, not the football which seems to be pushed aside.

You may want to be a "technological leader" in sports websites but that doesnt make it good to navigate.

Do you know where the Ladder will situate on the site?

 

[dont bowl there]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

First time i have ever looked at the A-League website and i must say it does look very nice. First thing i noticed is that ads/sponsers were down the bottom and it was nicely set out.

 

[JuddyisGod]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

I have a lot more respect for the powers that be at the AFL website because of this thread. Good work Sandy

 

[Angry Dragon]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

This thread reminds me of the commercial FM stations that hold a listener feedback survey to try and improve their market share.

If they knew what they were doing in the area of their supposed expertise they'd have a professional product first time without the need to create something by democracy.

The site was magnificent a few years back. It's a dogs breakfast today.

 

[94_Eagles]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Glad possessions will be included in GameDay stats!

Still hoping the Audio/video section will switch places with the Round information.

Exactly where is the ladder going to fit, Sandy?

 

[Borgsta]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Sandy,
any news on this?

when i click on Match Report I get the following



Using Opera 9.10 and have never had this problem before. Scripts are not disabled.

 

[Lonie_from_50]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Just on the topic of advertising, i think we all know how important it is to the site to have them up there, but then again, what we are saying is it is too exposing (in a sense), and also, I am sure there are many of people who quickly have to think if they are on the BigPond site, or if they are on the afl site.

I have just done a bit of research, as many already have, but probably not in as much depth, but just comparing sponsors to other major world leagues.

English Premier League - no advertising except for the major official sponsor, Barclays

NFL - one small advert for Motorola, which is hard to confuse...I at first thought it was an ad for NFL.

NHL - only advertising is the NHL shop

A-League - Has it's sponsors tidied up at the bottom in an organised fashion, with no over-exposure.

Conclusion of above sites - No over-exposure of sponsors if there. Also, most sponsors on site are related to the sport (ie. NHL shop).

---------------------------

AFL - First thing that loads up is a BigPond logo with tabs to BigPond products etc on a top menu...wait, there it is, the AFL site. A couple more sponsors blended in, that's fine (Toyota, Qantas)...then a big mo-fo'ing add appears as big as the main flash screen, again about BigPond...and to it's right, standing out, another small BigPond ad...then down the bottom, where sponsors should be...are links to AFL related products etc.

It's backwards!

That is all for now.

 

[skipper kelly]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Sandy,
any news on this?

Why dont you use IE?

 

[skipper kelly]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Just on the topic of advertising, i think we all know how important it is to the site to have them up there, but then again, what we are saying is it is too exposing (in a sense), and also, I am sure there are many of people who quickly have to think if they are on the BigPond site, or if they are on the afl site.

It is a BigPond site that provides coverage of the AFL.

 

[sldavey]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey all,


phoenix-rise and 94eagles asked about ladder placement...
Once the NAB Cup is complete and we enter 'main' Season, the ladder will form part of the dashboard (on the right hand side where fixtures/results are).

angrydragon makes a comment suggests we oughta know what we're doing and release a professional product in the first place...

Yes, we could have waited till start of Season and launch without this type of engagement with fans. Sure we could have done that and that's certainly the approach some companies and products take. Our view for this year, was we purposely wanted to launch a beta to get "realtime" feedback. We could have chosen to include only feedback received from "official surveys" but that doesn't always give realtime feedback based on realtime usage.


The decision to launch a beta version is one I'm comfortable sticking with.

The old site evolved over five years ... I reckon most of you might have thought it was "pretty average" in year 1 and it ultimately evolved. I take the same view this time around. In fact I'm more confident that this is a better way because people feel "connected" with it. Bit '******' you might say? Sure ... some people will see it that way, others will appreciate being asked in realtime.


borgsta on Opera 9.10...
Not sure mate. Send me some screen dumps to my private mail on this forum and I'll log them with the developers.


lonie_from_50...
As for the a-league, all due respect to our football counterparts at the FFA, the ads could be down the bottom because they don't have enough traffic today, to generate decent revenues from advertising. The advertisers who want exposure on AFL.com know the traffic numbers and want to be "above the fold".


Advertising will always annoy people, I acknowledge that. The reality is it's where the revenues are online (today).


Cheers,
Sandy

 

[Fred]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey All,

Few more updates for you:

Leper makes a comment about the website bing all fancy (ie. lots of MB) and is that done to partly to force people into broadband? Or is that just a conspiracy theory and are 90% of Aussies already on broadband anyway ...

There's a few reasons why we wanted to "up the ante" on AFL.com:

1. More than 82% of AFL.com users are on broadband

1. 
   
   That's because it's almost impossible to use it with dial-up. There are plenty of places in the bush where broadband doesn't reach. My last place was only 4km from Echuca but because of the Telstra phone line quality not only was broadband unavailable but dial-up barely worked.

 

[PHX]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey all,


phoenix-rise and 94eagles asked about ladder placement...
Once the NAB Cup is complete and we enter 'main' Season, the ladder will form part of the dashboard (on the right hand side where fixtures/results are).

No no no no no no no.

Please dont do that. Thats pretty much putting live scores and the ladder in the dumpster over there. There is too much space given for news. Put the ladder on the left hand side with scores above the ladder on the left as that's where most instintively look first on a site I think you would find.
e.g. (e.g. http://www.nba.com/)
It makes it look much tidier in my opinion.

lonie_from_50...
As for the a-league, all due respect to our football counterparts at the FFA, the ads could be down the bottom because they don't have enough traffic today, to generate decent revenues from advertising. The advertisers who want exposure on AFL.com know the traffic numbers and want to be "above the fold".

BTW Sandy, you answered about the A-league and singled them out but not about the NHL, NFL etc which are huge sites and have no such flood of advertising. The majority of the advertising "above the fold" is Telstra's, there is such thing as over-advertising. Push the ads over to the right hand side at the very least, they are then noticed but dont seem so much in the way.

Cheers.

 

[PHX]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey All,

Few more updates for you:

Leper makes a comment about the website bing all fancy (ie. lots of MB) and is that done to partly to force people into broadband? Or is that just a conspiracy theory and are 90% of Aussies already on broadband anyway ...

There's a few reasons why we wanted to "up the ante" on AFL.com:

1. More than 82% of AFL.com users are on broadband

1. 
   
   That's because it's almost impossible to use it with dial-up. There are plenty of places in the bush where broadband doesn't reach. My last place was only 4km from Echuca but because of the Telstra phone line quality not only was broadband unavailable but dial-up barely worked.

1. 
   
   Exactly. So they'll use Sportal instead because they HAVE to, I had dial-up until not so long ago and even that old site with dial-up was hell. I'd hate to think what dial-uppers have to go through now.

 

[MaccaHawk]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

ash78 - I just don't know about about international bandwidth. The pipes into our video caches and servers are huge so it's difficult for me to find solutions to overseas bandwidth problems. THe good news ... We've just partnered with a sports right specialist to look at how we can better use our international rights. I mentioned ysterday a "download" product is one idea and you mention a mirror site which could be another business model. It is on the agenda to do something new this year ash78 so we'll keep you posted.



Cheers,
Sandy

The problems of stop/start on the match replays seems to stop when I do the following:

1. Load up the quarter you want to watch;
2. Once the video starts, pause it for a few minutes
3. After a few minutes, start to watch the video

By that stage the computer seems to have caught up with enough of the download to negate the need for further buffering/pausing while you're watching.

Might work for others if you try it.

 

[Leper]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

Hey all,


phoenix-rise and 94eagles asked about ladder placement...
Once the NAB Cup is complete and we enter 'main' Season, the ladder will form part of the dashboard (on the right hand side where fixtures/results are).

Thanks for your replies mate. You'll never please everybody but good to see you're trying.

When setting up the ladder, can you please put some sort of IT boffin code or bug in there so the word "Richmond" can only appear and any of the top 5 or 6 slots. You know, 9 or 10 slots above the word "Carlton".

Cheers mate.

 

[Leper]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

That's because it's almost impossible to use it with dial-up.

Yep, that was my point. I reckon they could address this very simply by having a HTML version of the site. In the past I've been into internet cafes in the back blocks of places like Thailand and Vietnam where connections were slow as all hell, but nevertheless was able to get the footy scores and then go back to some bar and drown my sorrows knowing Richmond got flogged again.

Now you won't be able to do that. Which, actually, might not be a bad thing. Yeah, ******** it, make it 10MB per page. The last thing I need to know is the football scores. Too ********ing depressing.

Edit - why does the word "********" get 8 *'s? Shouldn't it be 4? And you, Fred, of all people, should know how the quote thingggy works. Shame ^3.

 

[bad80shair]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

If they knew what they were doing in the area of their supposed expertise they'd have a professional product first time without the need to create something by democracy.

I agree completely. Any old monkey can do what they're told.

But the combined powers of three members of the AIMIA executive, running a project that's got five years on the board, should know little things like that fixtures require time zones, 'Waverly' is spelled with an ley, stats are expected in a certain order and players are rarely ordered by their christian name.

 

[sausageroll]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

I don't really need to add any suggestions at this stage. Everyone on BF is contributing plenty of ideas/complaints.

I do want to say though Sandy how good it is to see you asking the fans for this feedback and either using this information to improve the site or giving (mostly) good feedback to us on why things were done in a particular way.

Great job Sandy.

 

[Mr Eagle]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

The club sites were originally slated to be up and running this week... do we know when they will be launched now? (I'm presuming the delay is due to the number of ideas rolling in via the feedback process)

 

[CaptainPorks]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

I agree completely. Any old monkey can do what they're told.

But the combined powers of three members of the AIMIA executive, running a project that's got five years on the board, should know little things like that fixtures require time zones, 'Waverly' is spelled with an ley, stats are expected in a certain order and players are rarely ordered by their christian name.

it's a beta site you clown. that's why you launch things in beta - so you can iron out bugs / issues / mistakes in real time through constructive feedback.

 

[DanA]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

it's a beta site you clown. that's why you launch things in beta - so you can iron out bugs / issues / mistakes in real time through constructive feedback.

Mate you can call it what ever you want.

It went live to the public at the beginning of the preseason competition of the 3rd largest sporting league (by attendance) in the world.

This launch has been a joke. My little cousin could have designed a better site in front page!

 

[94_Eagles]

Re: BetaSite of AFL.com.au

The codies and designers seem to be hell bent into shoving fixtures/results and the ladder into the corner on the left hand side. Sandy, can you tell me why this section isn't getting a more prominent position on the page considering it is arguably the most important piece(s) of information on the page?

Remember the last iteration of the site? The ladder and results were in an eye-catching, easy to view part of the page. Why was this changed?