I recently installed crown molding in my house. For anyone who has ever done that, it is life’s ultimate lesson in humility. The angles and math needed to accomplish this seemingly simple task is staggering. After sawing through about 10 feet of expensive molding, I decided to seek out some help.
So, I went down to Lowes and bought a book. This book had a web site. It is clean, simple and did only one thing well — sold products and information to install molding and trim. It didn’t assume I wanted to receive CrownMolding Monthly, the e-newsletter on everything new and exciting on crown molding, take a tour of their factory, etc. The goal was to get me to solve my problem. It did that very well.
When I need to install crown molding again in the future, I know the web site will be there and I trust that I will be able to get me through any angle problems, regardless of how complex. This is the perfect relationship that a destination web site should have with its readers.
How does this all relate to soccer tournaments? Your tournament is a destination. Teams come to participate in your event and need to know only a few things: Who, what, where, when and how much. Too often, we come across tournament sites that try to engage visitors with the sponsoring organization, community information to a staggering degree, the total history of the tournament, trivia, polls and surveys, chat boards, and on and on and on. Ultimately, teams want a quality experience at a level which they can compete and get better in an atmosphere of mutual respect and fun. Anything that gets in the way of that on your web site is visual junk.
Our Advice: Stick to the basics. Seek out and destroy any web page on your site that does not contribute to streamlining the application, communication and participation process. Go to your web site link that you publish. Count the number of clicks it takes to get to your application. Is is more than one? If so, why? Can your guest teams find the tournament from the page you publish? Too many tournament events hide their tournament on a club page, forcing a potential guest team to hunt for the front door to the tournament. Each tournament should have its own domain identity. After all, teams are coming to participate in your TOURNAMENT, not watch a couple of your club games. Simple is best; less is more.