By Tom Nelson

Tom Nelson is the Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations at St. Cloud State University, where he coordinates the athletic department's Web site. An active member of CoSIDA, Nelson sits on the group's Site Selection Committee. He can be reached at: tcnelson@stcloudstate.edu.

For every college athletic department, a Web presence is key to success. Your athletics Web page is where your fans and alumni go for updated information and prospective student-athletes get their first impression of your program. More and more, it serves as a marketing and revenue source.

But it is also a constantly changing medium, and keeping up with the Joneses can be a constant battle. That's why, a year ago, we decided to implement a major overhaul of our athletics Web site here at St. Cloud State University.

Over the past 15 years, our Web site has become the primary information source for Husky athletics, and our fans have increasingly looked to it for fresh updates, dynamic images, and the latest in video and audio applications. However, we weren't always providing what we wanted to.

"Our previous Web site design had been in place for about four years," says Athletic Media Relations Director Anne Abicht. "It presented a lot of information, but we really needed to enhance its overall appearance and format. In addition, we wanted to streamline the processes for updating information and images."

COLLABORATING FOR SUCCESS
St. Cloud State competes as an NCAA Division II institution in 21 sports, while the Huskies' men's and women's ice hockey programs compete as Division I affiliates in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. We don't have the financial resources of a large Division I institution, but we have good-sized fan and alumni bases that expect a vibrant Web site.

Updating the site began with discussions about who would actually tackle the project of converting the hundreds of pages. We considered outsourcing the project to a commercial vendor that specializes in building and hosting Web sites for intercollegiate athletic programs, as many schools do. For a sports information department already swamped with the usual day-to-day operations, publication production schedules, and game management demands, this was a tempting idea.

But it's an expensive route. We wanted to add a lot of video and audio to our Web site, which adds up when developed by an outside vendor. So we stayed in-house with the project. We are lucky to have a strong Web development office on campus that was willing to partner with us. Staying in-house also allowed on-campus proximity of the Web development team and the ability to handle issues and problems unique to our school.

Initial discussions for the project began about one year in advance. Representatives from the athletic department, athletic media relations department, University Communications, Instructional Technologies and Infrastructure Services (ITIS), and Information Technology Services (ITS) formed a committee to talk about the wants and needs of the new Web site. That team was eventually whittled down to three main players from ITIS and ITS, and four members of the athletic media relations department.

To start, everyone provided their "wish lists" for the redesign. We made sure to talk about future needs so that what we implemented now would also be helpful down the road. These first meetings were free-flowing discussions allowing all parties a chance to brainstorm about what was needed on the site, what was possible, and what would not work.

We also prioritized what was most important from the athletic department's perspective. At the top of the list was to completely overhaul the "news editor" component of the Web site. This feature allows the athletic media relations team to enter stories, photos, and updates onto the site from a Web-based editing system, thus eliminating the need for cumbersome HTML formatting and FTP (file transfer) uplinks.

"We update the Web site several times each day, and the enhancement of the Web site's news editing system has been a major time saver for everyone in this office," says Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations Celest Stang. "It allows us to instantly update stories and provide scores from any location with Web access."

Another priority was to improve our use of images. The previous Web site design was limited to small thumbnail photos next to the headline stories on the main page. We wanted large, horizontally based images that rotate when new stories are placed into the system.

"St. Cloud State is very fortunate to have an outstanding photographer on campus, and we wanted to be able to incorporate his dynamic images of our student-athletes on the Web site," Abicht explains. "The Web is really a visual-based medium, and these images truly grab and hold the viewer's attention."

One more objective was to get rid of outdated pages. Over the years, a Web site accumulates a lot of links, and some of them become irrelevant. The redesign process provided an excellent opportunity to decide which pages needed to stay, and which ones could be removed.

THE RIGHT LOOK
With a list of priorities in place, we were ready to start putting together design ideas for the new site. From our initial meetings, we knew we wanted a home page that consistently displayed a fresh and appealing look. We also desired pages that would be easy to use for our students, athletes, alumni, and fans. But we wanted to avoid the "cookie-cutter" look of sites that are provided by many of the commercial Web development companies.

We attempted to create a sleek and clean-looking first page void of too many bells and whistles. For functionality, we placed links to team information, tickets, scores, schedules, and a department directory in prominent locations.

Another factor was keeping the design consistent with the University's main Web site. This dictated the size of our pages, page backgrounds, and page headers.

Our designers also visited other college athletic Web sites to get a feel for the "competition." This helped us come up with some good ideas and also learn what we didn't want.

From there, the designers started to formulate rough drafts for the Web site. They created three distinctly different designs, which were presented to the committee for feedback. Some suggestions included the placement of university logos, better use of imagery, more obvious location and prominence of menus, and easy-to-find page links.

Next, we solicited input on the redesign from various sources in the athletic department, including administrators, coaches, and student-athletes. Getting feedback from student-athletes was especially important as it allowed us to gain a younger person's perspective.

Page mock-ups of the new Web site were brought to department meetings to give administrators and coaches a chance to provide feedback, while athletes were encouraged to stop in to view the design options and offer advice. The athletic media relations office then brought the input back to the committee and factored it into the final decisions.

EXTRA FEATURES
Athletic Web sites have recently moved from a static information source to an interactive audio-visual experience. It was important for us to offer both audio and video features on the new Web site, along with photo galleries. To keep costs low, we worked with several groups who already covered our games.

On the audio side, we created links to the local radio outlets that carry live audio streaming of Husky athletic events. A commercial station covers our football, basketball, and men's ice hockey games. And the campus student radio station carries many other home events, including volleyball, soccer, women's hockey, wrestling, baseball, and softball.

In order to offer live video Web streaming, we partnered with two groups. The first was on campus: St. Cloud State has developed a sterling reputation for its mass communications department, including its outstanding television production program, which includes the student-directed Husky Productions. This group telecasts all home men's hockey games in a very professional manner, and we work with them on the productions.

The second group is a local business called B2 Networks, which specializes in video streaming. B2 Networks approached us four years ago about forming a Web streaming partnership, and we signed a contract with them that provides a revenue split on profits from the pay-per-view service. The network works with Husky Productions for men's hockey games and sets up a live camera feed at many other selected home events (soccer, football, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, and women's ice hockey).

In addition, several of our opponents in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association offer the B2 Network. This allows fans in St. Cloud a chance to watch road games on the Web if they can't travel in person.

Other sport teams are covered by Penn Atlantic, which streams video of many contests in our conference, the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. A link to this service is provided on our home page.

Another way we provide live event coverage is by streaming stats during many home events. If Web access is available at the event site on campus, the athletic media relations office feeds live, in-game stats to the Web site. We use StatCrew software (the industry standard for the majority of collegiate sports), which allows a simple connection for uplinking onto the Web.

Beyond gametime streaming, the new Web design features audio and video clips--both interviews and highlights of Husky athletes and coaches--sprinkled throughout our pages. We obtained audio recording equipment and software to create MP3 audio files. We also teamed with University Communications in the creation of video interviews. Additional MP3 audio interviews are provided through a new connection with the university's student radio station.

Finally, we have enhanced the site with photo slide shows. Using high-quality imagery provided by campus photographers, the slide shows include captions and energizing background music.

AS A MARKETING TOOL
Like many collegiate athletic departments, St. Cloud State is always looking for ways to market its program to various constituents. Therefore, a major directive for the redesign process was to include more opportunities for promotional efforts, advertising sales, and publicizing what we do.

In our redesign, we allotted space on the Web site for banner advertisements, button advertisements, and sidebar links. These direct viewers to our ticket office, booster clubs, and bookstore (for merchandise sales). We also have a button advertising our coaches' radio shows and another for information about proposed renovations to our ice hockey and events center facility.

In addition, we left open space for potential ads and corporate sponsor logos on both the home page and individual team pages. The St. Cloud State sports marketing crew has used some of this space as a sponsorship benefit and some for our own promotions. We hope to sell advertisements in these slots in the future.

Web site marketing also plays a role in recruiting student-athletes. For many potential student-athletes, a school's Web site is their first contact with the institution and its athletic department. First impressions are always important, and an effective Web site can ensure a recruit takes a second look at your program.

At St. Cloud State, an online prospective athlete form allows users to enter their name and background information along with the sport they are interested in. The response to this form has been excellent and has provided our coaches with many leads for potential recruits, particularly with student-athletes outside the immediate area. We typically get five to 10 responses a day from our prospective student-athlete form.

AN ONGOING PROJECT
Since the redesign, the athletic media relations department has had an opportunity to work with the new system for the past six months. Like many new technologies, the site is an evolving process. We are in close contact with the university's Web development team to meet new demands and cure any glitches.

"The athletics Web site is a work in progress," says Stang. "Our Web development people did an outstanding job creating a site with a fresh look, which will certainly carry us into the future. We also continue to develop new enhancements for the site. For better or worse, this is the nature of the beast, and you either hop on the train or you get left at the station."

We are hoping to expand our audio and video features and pursue more e-commerce opportunities. We would like to increase online ticketing to include more home events and also sell and assign season tickets via the Web site.

Another idea we are researching is accepting payment for all things related to the athletic department, such as fees for youth athletic camps, golf fundraisers, and donations. Online auctions and merchandise sales are other areas that would offer more e-commerce opportunities for the Huskies.

A final piece of the puzzle is the creation of a .com name for the Web site. The current Web site URL still retains the .edu status, but we are discussing moving to a .com URL, such as scsuhuskies.com. This would ease name recognition and retention.

The entire process of our Web redesign took the better part of eight months, but it was all worth it. The new site has been met with rave reviews. The increase of images has enhanced the site's appearance, and navigation improvements make it much more user-friendly. People are excited to visit the Web site, which makes them excited to be part of the Husky program.

To access the St. Cloud State University athletic Web site, please visit: www.stcloudstate.edu/athletics.