Yesterday, I received an email from YATL (Yet Another Tournament Listing) web site called The Scoreboard News at www.scoreboardnews.com. In their invitation, in big red letters, they said: [Please do not … refer us to any other web site for additional information]
I found that mildly entertaining, but also a glaring indicator of just how bad most tournament web sites are. How many times have you been told: Just go to our web site for information on that.. and when you get there, you’re left staring at the site, wondering how you would get to that bit of information about the scores or tryouts or a news item on the club, etc, etc.
The Scoreboard News, whose entire existence depends on information about tournaments, camps and leagues is begging its posters to please not send them a reference to their web site. Just fill out the online form they provide for you.
Our Advice: Giving people the Just go to our web site.. is the same thing as saying just down the road, can’t miss it. It hardly ever is just down the road and 90% of the time, you will miss it. Unless you have a TourneyCentral.com site.
In the web industry, we have what is known as the bounce rate. That is the number of folks who come to your front page and don’t go deeper into your web site. I think it is poorly named.
Our TourneyCentral.com sites have a sightly higher than average high bounce rate. But, that is good because when you go to one of our tournament web sites, you can immediately see the Who, What, Where, When, How Much at a glance. We don’t leave your visitors staring at the screen, wondering which link will get them where they need to go.
If you miss what you are looking for on our sites, it probably only means that you have become conditioned to ignore the useless front page most sites put up and start clicking without reading. But, that is ok too, because our About, FAQ, Application, etc. pages all have the Who, What, Where, When, How Much info on them as well.