Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

Taking a different view of the upcoming FA Cup Final between Chelsea v Man United (come on the reds!), following the relaunch of the Manchester United website in 2006, which has since received multiple award nominations, I was interested to see how Chelsea are promoting themselves online, both in football and commercial terms, in comparison.

Surprising to say the least, but the current Chelsea FC website is a fully flash driven site, providing an ultimately different user experience to Manchester United.

As expected and required for a variety of reasons including search engine optimisation and accessibility, a text only version of the site has been provided.

Having spent some time exploring the Chelsea website, as I’m already fairly familiar with the Man United website in terms of information architecture, user experience and ultimately the user experience that has won them awards, I am beginning to un-cover some fairly significant user experience issues which can only be detrimental the overall Chelsea brand experience and online revenue generation currently.

Very top level, but below are some of my initial user experience comments, in no particular order (**editors note – as I have been analysing the Chelsea website to produce this post I have realised that I need to get back to paid work, so whereas the following list and this post in general could be alot longer, I had to hold off going into this subject too deeply!):

• non-caching flash homepage – the main flash movie that you view on the homepage (once it finishes loading, which even on an 8MB broadband connection feels quite frustrating) hasn’t been coded to allow for caching of the flash file, so therefore each time a user wishes to return to the homepage, (perhaps as they are feeling lost – but that is another matter) they have to wait for the full movie to load. To compound matters, viewing the site in Firefox actually made the flash file hang at some stages, requiring a browser refresh.
• mixed navigational methods – although one of my key recommendations for large, particularly e-commerce websites, is to provide users with alternative ways to navigate a site based on their browsing preferences ie. using the search facility, exploring the promoted products/information and navigating through the main navigational routes, the implementation of some of Chelsea’s browsing features, such as the zoom functionality in particular and the discovery of the sidebar sitemap, ensure that rather than generating confidence in the user, confusion is brought on followed by frustration at trying to understand how the site is working
• fixed site size, both horizontally and vertically – by using a full fixed width flash movie to display the site, a user has to continually click inside small internal frames to scroll through the content within the frame. By the nature of the site, articles and reports can be extensive, which requires significant amount of scrolling, although unfortunately not by the standard means of scrolling the browser window
• poor quality imagery – although the site isn’t actually selling products, the quality of the imagery used throughout the site is detrimental to the overall appeal of the site, as it provides a much less professional representation of the club and its sponsors to a visitor
• non-clickable areas appearing to be clickable – some of the ‘hit areas’ within the site have been incorrectly included within the flash movies, which result in the mouse cursor changing to signify a link when in fact the area isn’t clickable

What Manchester United are doing well from a user experience aspect

1. a structured, consistent and professional presentation of information
2. a standard but ultimately intuitive navigation and information architecture
3. a polished visual style which provides fans and business users with the appropriate levels of brand and club awareness and information
4. use of interactive flash where it can enhance the user experience ie. a virtual tour of Old Trafford
5. a highly visible and consistent search facility, a must for such a content rich and deep website

What Manchester United are doing well from a commercial aspect

1. constantly integrated promotion of commercial channels such as MU TV, MU Mobile, MU Pics, MU Finance
2. constant promotion and visibility of the register/login/account details functionality – ultimately by encouraging fans to register Man Utd can tailor content and offers accordingly, providing much more commercial value to the site
3. an integrated visual approach combining the brand and the sponsors
4. an overall professional visual style which caters for both the fans and corporate requirements, which ultimately reflects well on Manchester United as a commercial business

My recommendations to the online brand manager at Chelsea FC

If I was sat in front of the online brand/marketing manager for Chelsea, I would recommend a range of actions which would certainly help Chelsea focus their current online brand marketing.

1. carry out user testing, with a range of users such as casual supporters, die-hard supporters, corporate hospitality users, the press, visually impaired and more
2. obtain a heuristic evaluation of the website (view a 1 page overview of what is a hueristic evaluation and how it works)
3. develop persona’s of typical users of the site, concentrating on what key areas they are likely to be looking for within the site
4. carry out card sorting exercises to gain an insight into how actual users expect to locate different pieces of information throughout the site
5. based on the above points, consider testing a different, user centred design solution which would aim to vastly increase the usability and overall user experience of the site

In my view, although such a user centred design project will have resource and cost implications, by really focussing the site on the user, I would predict Chelsea FC would experience significant :

• increases in page views
• increases in length of visit
• increases in natural search traffic
• increases in uptake of commercial channels (betting, mobile, TV etc)
• increases in visitor loyalty, especially if user registration is introduced (similar to ONE United)
• decreases in visitor drop-out rates
• good press regarding the site and its usability and accessibility

Final thoughts

Comparing the 2 online presences currently, although Chelsea have made significant on the pitch strides to rival Manchester United, the current online battle is most certainly being won by Manchester United, who appear to be harnessing most of the commercial opportunities that can lead from an immersive and intuitive user experience.

Ultimately results on the pitch will always make the headlines (and provide the marketing) for a football club, but I look forward to seeing whether Chelsea will look to online as a marketing channel with which they can more effectively promote the club and the brand to what is now a worldwide audience.

I’d be interested to hear any feedback to this post, as well as finding out if anyone has more examples of potentially harmful rather than positive user experiences amongst football clubs and other sporting brands online?

Tags: Usability, user experience review