Bradley Howard's Blog

npowerclub72.com site review

Aug 9, 2011 at 2:34pm

This week npower, who secured the naming rights to the Football League from the 2010/11 season for three years, jumped on the bandwagon and launched a Football League social network - www.npowerclub72.com.

The agency behind the website clearly had some good intentions, some of which I agree with:

Don’t use Facebook Connect for everything, because unless you’re a unique level of Superbrand, all the consumer data that you’ll be collecting will be owned by Facebook. I agree with this and at Endava we call this On Portal and Off Portal. Off Portal are social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. where the brand has no permanent rights to consumer data, and On Portal are brand-owned social networks where all the data belongs to the brand.
Badges are good. I also agree with the philosophy that when users have used the site for long enough, reward them with badges. This idea has been around for a long time (Xbox or even Gold/Platinum credit cards and airline points cards). Badges cost nothing to distribute (they are only pixels), and instantly provide a level of loyalty to a website where users want to return to earn the next badge. On Npower’s website, users earn a badge for visiting/ claiming to visit a Football League club’s ground.
Football and social networks. It’s been a long time coming – with football the most popular sport in the UK, and social networks so successful here as well, it’s natural to create a network for football fans.

So far so good.

The design is OK, nothing too fancy, and then again, it probably doesn’t need to be – neither Facebook or its twin brother Google+ are going to win any creative design awards.

Here’s what I’d have done differently if we ran the site:

Badges are overused. In fact, the only thing to do on the site is earn badges. No other user generated content exists, and there’s no moderation on the site to you claiming all the badges. This defeats the loyalty aspect completely.
No Facebook integration at all. The site should update Facebook (and Twitter, etc.) when users earn badges (once they sort out the badge issue).
The visit-a-football-ground should be extended to upload pictures when a user visits a ground. This will provide a level of self-moderation.
There’s no mobile support. In 2011, all sites should include mobile browser support and then include [iPhone and Android, etc.] app support. The mobile support should include mobile photo uploads and GPS, to provide FourSquare style ‘Check-In’ functionality to grounds.
There’s little content links to the Football League. I would expect at least a league table and results ticker.

Back to my point above – a social network for football fans has been a long time coming, and I still think the opportunity exists for someone (probably a sponsor) to produce one.

tags:

Endava, Facebook, FourSquare, User Generated Content, design, football, loyalty, site review, social media, sponsorship, sport, website production,

0 Comments

Tour de France on ITV Player

Jul 28, 2011 at 12:59pm

A huge congratulations to Mark Cavendish on winning the Tour de France's green jersey. That's the colour worn by the leader in the Tour's points competition, which is the race's most consistent high-finisher.

I watched more coverage of the Tour de France this year than ever before. It might be because I've been cycling more (myself) this year, but it's probably got more to do with ITV's superb coverage on TV and online.

The online coverage had a quick user registration process - literally just the email address. The benefit of the registration was twofold:

Users could watch the coverage(!)
Users received an email when coverage started the next day

The second advantage was very refreshing - literally receiving an email when "the Tour" started each day, and then I received notification when the entire Tour highlights was on TV and the Internet.

Websites that require registration for no apparent reason other than untargeted 'spam' email could learn a lot from ITV. The only piece of feedback to ITV for their online coverage is to increase the quality by increasing the video bitrate. I don't mind the adverts because I understand they are paying for the content in the first place.

tags:

ITV, bicycles, email, quality, sport, video,

3 Comments

10 years since joining

Jun 2, 2011 at 8:13am

This time ten years ago I joined IMG as the Development Manager to build a new Content Management System.

The digital division within IMG was about four years old at that point, and had bought the digital rights to a number of sports organisations with the hope that the advertising and sponsorship on those sites would cover the costs of writing huge cheques to the sports organisations. 'Hope' is a strong word, because at the time the Internet bubble was at it's height, and we all thought we'd be billionaires by Christmas.

When I joined, IMG was pulling out of a number of these deals, and looking for efficiencies with the tiny development teams.

The Internet was so different back then. Products were very expensive. Vendors and 'experts' were all learning as they were going along - so when we got stuck, we were well and truly on our own. For instance we tried different CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) to handle the huge amount of traffic we were experiencing, and ended up creating our own using Cacheflow servers. Just looking up the link just now made me laugh - because these boxes used to be the size of a fridge, and now they're the size of a PC. Once we'd got the Cacheflows stable, we simply migrated to Akamai.

I remember people, including the CTO, would sleep in the office when we expected incidents to happen. I remember arguments with database vendors about licensing - some wanted to charge for every visitor that accessed the website, because they saw that as a database user. I remember running analytics reports on websites that used to take several days to compile, and when we wanted to run the report again with a different metric, all the numbers in the report would change! That same report in SiteCatalyst now takes a second to run and end users run it themselves.

Most of the really difficult stuff back in 2001 is now a commodity. Half of those products now have a freeware solution.

In around 2005/6 I moved to the client side - project management and operations. The CMS was very stable, and it was time to look at a decent off-the-shelf solution because we were losing pitches because of our lack of multi-lingual support, versioning, WYSIWYG editing and advanced SEO support.

We chose Sitecore as the CMS platform, and for the first time we looked at offshoring to India to migrate our sites. Three months of total pain followed. For the first time since joining IMG, we missed deadlines (in sport, although it sounds obvious you can't miss deadlines - most of the time you might as well not deliver anything than deliver a project late). We pulled the projects back to the UK and an army of contractors joined the development team. Some were good, some weren't. We started to offshore to Eastern Europe instead. And it was a revelation:

Being able to fly there and back in a day (not recommended, although possible and sometime necessary);
The cultural similarities;
The push-back nature from developers on some of the requirements.

Then in late 2008 we looked to outsource more work to Romania via Endava. What started off at a simple outsourcing deal changed at the last moment, and the staff TUPEd over to Endava in January 2009.

Since then we've worked on some new projects outside of sport, and the Web has become a stable, maturing, controllable entity. In 2001 we were looking only to stabilise our clients' sites.

Our traffic (bandwidth, visitors and page impressions) have all increased exponentially in ten years, with some exponentially, several times. Social Networks have come and some of them have gone. Do they compete? No, they simply direct more and more traffic to our clients' sites.

And now to the future. In 2011 we are looking at providing data insights, personalised experiences, full integration with back off systems, and providing a true ROI for our client's digital properties.

tags:

Adobe, Akamai, Content Delivery Network, Content Management Systems, Endava, IMG, Romania, Sitecore, business, digital media, future, sport, web traffic, website production,

0 Comments

A Premier League play off

May 8, 2011 at 3:21pm

I've been a big fan of the way that American sports have a play off at the end of the season between the top two teams. Winning a league requires a huge amount of consistency, and a fair dosage of luck thrown in for good measure.

Look how exciting the Manchester United v Chelsea game has been billed - pretty much whoever wins is likely to be the Premiership champion. It's the English equivalent of a play off, and whoever wins... deserves the trophy.

I hope someone from the Premier League considers a play off, with this year being a dress rehearsal.

tags:

football, sport,

0 Comments

BT Vision and Sky Sports

Mar 4, 2011 at 2:23pm

I know everyone likes to complain about BT, however...

Last Friday I received a text from a good friend to say that Arsenal will be on Sky and ESPN 6 times over the next month. I don't have Sky Sports, mainly because I have four kids and a number of hobbies, all of which keep me away from the TV, and secondly it's pretty expensive for watching only a couple of matches a month. However I do try to follow Arsenal as much as I can.

We have BT Vision at home, which I've always found excellent value. In fact because it's free, and provides one of the best PVRs (think "a-more-stable-Sky+") on the market, it's unbeatable value.

So I went on to the BT Vision website on Friday lunchtime and ordered Sky Sports for the month. Yes - you can order it for the month, and when you order Sky Sports, you get virtually everything else thrown in as well - ESPN, kids channels, movies, etc., all for under £30. By Monday BT had updated my subscription and I watched Arsenal thrash Leyton Orient on ESPN on Tuesday.

As a consumer, the experience of using the web to upgrade my package through to using my BT Vision box could not have been simpler. I know everyone likes to complain about BT, however when they get it right, it really is as smooth as clockwork.

tags:

BT Vision, TV, sport,

1 Comment

Change: the enemy of stability, sometimes

Aug 10, 2010 at 11:39am

I'm a great fan of change at work.

Sometimes I like change for the necessity of just changing something. As a small example, at work I recommend people keep moving desks a couple of times a year, to sit next to different people (for many reasons - spread knowledge, establish a good, deeper relationship with different people, get a different perspective, and so on).

The one element of change at work that I don't like is system changes. When I speak to friends outside of work, they are amazed at why organisations need such large IT organisations, or even why a website needs so many technical resources.

Changing a system always brings a level of risk. Always. No matter how much everyone thinks "nothing can go wrong" - and yes, I hear this from experienced people as much as junior people - it can always come back and bite.

Unfortunately, the only way that you can assess risks of change appropriately is to be burnt (aka "get it wrong"). And after being burnt, its important to act almost scared of it happening again.

Several years ago we made a small modification to a website on a Friday afternoon. You can tell what happened next - there was a problem, and we all ended up working late into the weekend. Since then, we have a blanket rule of no live rollouts after Friday lunchtime.

I spoke to a senior manager at Endava about this recently, and he said that whenever his Managed Services division engage with a new client having stability issues, the first thing they improve or implement if it doesn't already exist is a full Change Request procedure. This immediately requires people to stop fire fighting and think about any changes. And it always reaps rapid improvements.

Another example is that retail banks have a code freeze during the last quarter of the year, to prevent anything impacting Xmas sales. On some of our sports websites at work, Xmas can be the busiest period (e.g. football). However we insist on a system wide freeze well before the Xmas period, and this creates the highest level of stability of the year. Let me repeat - the busiest time of the year in the most stable!

People adapt to change well. Even if it requires some help during the initial change 'shock'. However systems rarely respond to change well.

tags:

Endava, IT, banking, change, management training, software development, sport, website production,

0 Comments

2.5 times as many people in the US watch soccer than golf

Jun 14, 2010 at 1:44pm

Some interesting facts and figures from SportBusiness this morning:

Sports network ESPN said the USA's 1-1 draw with England in its opening game of the World Cup was the most-watched game for a national soccer team since 1994.

The match, shown on ABC, averaged 13 million viewers and attracted the biggest US audience for any game at the tournament in South Africa so far, according to Bloomberg. [1]

Compare this to golf, with:

The first round of this year's US Masters golf tournament drew the biggest audience for a golf event in US cable television history last Thursday as Tiger Woods returned to the sport after nearly five months.

Bloomberg reports that an average 4.94 million viewers watched on ESPN, beating the previous record of 4.76 million for the 2008 US Open playoff between Woods and Rocco Mediate. [2]

One would have thought that golf is a far bigger sport in the US than 'soccer', but apparently not - these figures show that 2.5 times as many people in the US watch soccer than golf.

Sources:

[1] http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/177724/espn-usa-england-most-watched-soccer-game-since-1994

[2] http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/174892/first-round-of-masters-breaks-us-viewing-record

tags:

World Cup, football, sport, television,

1 Comment

FIFA World Cup Calendar

Jun 8, 2010 at 2:07pm

marca.com

This site has the best Information Architecture that I've seen for ages. On the single page you can see what group every country is in and when and where they play each match.

Thanks to Firen for sending me the link first - and then I received it several times from others!

tags:

IA , World Cup, football, sport,

0 Comments

Come on England bid

May 15, 2010 at 10:57pm

I'm really pleased with the news coverage of the England 2018 bid for the FIFA World Cup this week.

In the UK we have an unhealthy lack of interest in sport, as demonstrated by the press over the constant negative publicity for the Olympics.

Make no mistake, the Olympics will be a success - stadia will be sold out, huge parts of our infrastructure (transport, telecommunications, accomodation, media, tourism) will be massively improved on a number of levels, and the whole country will have a feel good factor for the summer of 2012.

Having the World Cup here 6 years after the Olympics will be such a great event - our favourite three sports in the UK are football, football and football... it is in our national DNA.

tags:

Olympics, football, sport,

0 Comments

The future - live events funding free content?

May 14, 2010 at 1:25pm

Major League Baseball team the New York Mets are suffering falling attendances, despite the attraction of their new $800 million stadium, Citi Field..

The New York Times reports that the average attendance so far this season, after 22 home matches, is 31,892, compared to 38,744 last season. The 18-per-cent drop is puts the Mets second in percentage terms in falling MLB attendances this season. The Cleveland Indians are down 30 per cent on their last year's average, although this translates to a loss of only 6,585 fans a game, less than the Mets' 6,852.

Bad weather and poor performances by the Mets are being blamed.

“The problem is last year the tickets were really expensive and the team stunk and that can really stick with fans for a while,” said Jon Greenberg, the executive editor of Team Marketing Report, a sports industry research company.

Greenberg said a trend of new stadiums boosting ticket sales that was evident in the 1990s had tailed away.

“Stadium fatigue sets in much faster than it did before.”

The Mets cut ticket prices by up to 20 per cent after last season – their first at Citi Field – in an effort to pre-empt the “stadium fatigue”. However its monthly report to the MLB's commissioner’s office in March, showed ticket sales had dropped 40 per cent from the same period a year earlier.

via sportbusiness.com

With more and more content appearing free, or nearly free of charge - such as Spotify and iPlayer, there is a widespread opinion that live events will become more popular.

There are more music concerts than ever before, and these are likely to remain premium, high ticket cost (with a huge reliance on revenue from merchandise and other outlets at the venue).

However, American sport is the first report that I've seen which shows that even live events are being hit. This may be due to the recession last year, and this article suggests it's also to do with team performances.

If I was a media owner distributing my content for free, this article may provide some worrying evidence of having to find yet another business model.

tags:

Rights, business, freemium, iPlayer, live events, sport, spotify,

0 Comments

Tags

npowerclub72.com site review

Tour de France on ITV Player

10 years since joining

A Premier League play off

BT Vision and Sky Sports

Change: the enemy of stability, sometimes

2.5 times as many people in the US watch soccer than golf

FIFA World Cup Calendar

Come on England bid

The future - live events funding free content?

Bradley Howard

Other ways to find me: