For the second blog of KSS 782, I will be evaluating the Royal Challengers (http://www.royalchallengers.com), a cricket team based in Bangalore, Karnataka that plays in the Indian Premier League. In this evaluation, I will consider the ease of accessibility, the ease of navigation, the use of interactivity, the use of video, and the quality of content.
First, accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Before even accessing the website, I Google'd "Royal Challengers," to which the first link was the website, the second their Wiki page, the third the league's page for the team, the fourth their Facebook, the fifth their Twitter, and the sixth section of the "Times of India" newspaper. The website, along with their affiliations, were easily accessible from an initial standpoint of accessing the team information. The website itself was also easily accessible. Although it can be overlooked, a URL is significantly important to accessibility. The Royal Challengers made their URL simple and stand (which is good), by having their URL as www.royalchallengers.com. It eliminates confusion in their finding. While I don't know a lot about cricket, I found their website to be easily accessible to what I would assume are the most important parts of the game. The initial home, landing page featured multiple articles and columns that focused on games, stats, awards, and miscellaneous information. On top of that, it was easy to move around the pages cleanly.
My first glance of the website focused on the five top tabs: "Team," "IPL 2014," "News," "Fan Club," and "RCB Multimedia." These five tabs encompass the majority of what any fan would be visiting the website for. The first includes all information relating to the team, the second relating to the league, the third being all team news, the fourth revolving around the fan, and the fifth featuring multimedia, including photos, videos, and available downloads. The ease of navigation was simple and clean, as it should be. As aforementioned, the top tabs incorporate the majority of what someone is navigating for. The front page, as also discussed, features the most important columns, accolades, and recaps. The page is also fit to the screen of the user, which makes navigation easier in terms of scrolling up and down, and not having to scroll left and right. The team also utilized the entire page. Both sides, outside of the middle features, included logos, photos, columns, hashtags, apps, and social media links. Overall, I thought the website did an excellent job at navigation.
The third critique involves use of interactivity. Again, I thought the website did an excellent job in this aspect; they were extremely interactive with their fan base. In a few examples, one top link includes, "Catch the pulse and feel every beat of Team RCB" for a radio link. This quote pulls the audience in to the team to make them feel apart of something. Another link is to that of the team's statistics. Normally, this is a neutral, uneventful page. However, the website features the quote of, "Get an in-depth look at your favourite RCBian's performance." This quote, again, interacts the fan in to feeling they are connected, especially with the involvement of the word "favourite." Furthermore, the team has created a uniform hashtag of #SeizeTheDay for the team and its moments. This interactivity allows fans to tweet and capture moments all while involving the fan base with the hashtag. Lastly, the use of the "Fan Club" tab allows fans access to such interactivity options as contests, rewards, debates, forums, and blogs. All of these options allow the fans to connect with the team and other fans in order to share their opinions and thoughts. These options allow the fans to feel interconnected with the team.
Fourth, I think an adequate job of the video. I believe this is the area where the website, in relation to the other four critiques, allows the most room for improvement. The websites main use of video is featured in the "RCB Multimedia" tab, under "Videos." This page features hundreds of videos of interviews, games, and practices. While the website does an excellent job within this page, I think they could do a better job of the use of video on the front page or in the redirection to that "Videos" page. The only use of video we see on the front page is a picture of an app with a still-shot of a video playing in the app. The team could, for example, place videos on the homepage, which would show fans that they are included on the website. Even a link next to the videos of "See More Videos Here" could link fans to the "Videos" page where hundreds of other videos reside. While the website does an adequate job of the use of video, there is room for improvement.
Finally, the fifth aspect of this evaluation is quality of content. I thought the website did a great job in this aspect. Every tap, link, column, or post seemed well thought out in its process. Each tap does a good job at including quality content in its links. The homepage also features a wide variety of quality content, ranging from social media links to columns to recaps to fan interaction. Overall, as described throughout the other aspects of this evaluation, the website does a good job at accessibility, navigation, and interactivity in quality posts.
In summary, the Royal Challengers have an excellent, all encompassing website. It features the most important aspects that a cricket website is expected to have. It allows fans to easily and quickly find what they are searching for. It also includes quality links, posts, and content that are meaningful to a fan. As described, the main area of improvement is the opportunity for more video linkage on the home page. The website does a great job of photos of the homepage; they should simply swap a few of these photos out with videos.
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