If you haven’t built a sports website before, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with all the different things you can do. But in reality, you don't need a website with all the bells and whistles that companies try to sell you.

You need a clean website that looks professional and works great. Regardless of the website builder that you decide to use, check out this 10-step checklist that will help you ensure that all the T's are crossed when building your site.

10 steps that will simplify your sports website build

Step 1 - Pick the right sports website builder

Since you're running a sports organization during your weeknights or weekends, you need an easy-to-use builder with a small learning curve.

A few features you'll want your builder to have are:

1. Beautiful modern & mobile responsive templates: You want your website to look great on desktop and mobile phones, without you having to spend hours formatting your site

2. Embedded stats, scores, and standings section that updates automatically after each game.

3. The ability to process credit cards and embed registration forms: Being able to run registration right from your website is a major timesaver.

4. [BONUS] a 5-star customer support team that can help design your site with you.

Step 2 - Set up or buy your own domain

If you need to buy a new website domain, check out a domain hosting service like Godaddy.  Here is how to buy a domain in 3 steps.

After you buy your own domain, connect it to your website and make sure you get your SSL certificate added to your website.

IMPORTANT: You need an SSL certificate in order to keep user data secure and to verify the owners of the website. If you don't have this, website visitors get a notification that your website isn't secure.

Step 3 - Use a pre-built sports website design template to get the ball rolling and save major time

Most builders will have several pre-built templates that make getting your sports website up and running easy. Even if you want to add some of your own flair to it, I would recommend starting with the template and making tweaks as you go.

For example, here are four sports website templates that TeamLinkt offers:

Step 4 - Optimize your sports website images and logo size

When you're creating imagery for your website, make sure you are using the correct image sizes, or else your photos won't look good on your website.

These are the image sizes that we recommend using:

• Logo size: 400px x 300px

• Square image: 1080px x 1080px

• Full-width images: 2400px x 1600px

• Website favicon image: 16px x 16px

When saving your images, make sure they're saved as .pngs and not .jpegs. PNG images look and work best when designing your website.

Step 5 - Link your social media accounts on your sports website

Growing your social presence is a great way to increase awareness for your league which will result in more participants. On your website, you want to make sure that your social media profiles are easy to find & follow for players and parents that don't already know of your accounts.

Most builders will have a section where you can paste your social links onto your website and feature them right on your homepage.

Step 6 - Set your privacy rules

Decide if you want to show team rosters & individual player stats on your website. With a platform like TeamLinkt, you have the ability to set your specific privacy terms & conditions that parents & athletes will opt in to. 

If you're showing player statistics and rosters on your website, you'll want to make sure that your privacy policy is in place. 

Step 7 - Optimize your website navigation menu

 Decide if you want to show team rosters & individual player stats on your website. With a platform like TeamLinkt, you have the ability to set your specific privacy terms & conditions that parents & athletes will opt in to. 

If you're showing statistics and rosters on your website, you'll want to make sure that your privacy policy is in place.

Step 8 - Ensure your website colors are consistent with your logo & brand

Some sports website builders, like TeamLinkt's, make it easy to ensure consistent branding across your website. You just need to enter your brand colors and then the entire website will be branded with those specific colors.

Step 9 - Add additional pages to give your sports website more context

Aside from just featuring your stats, standings, and schedules, your website should also feature content about your club, league, or association.

To give your website visitors more information, try adding pages like:

• About us page - showcase your hard-working team of volunteers and board members.

• Photos & videos page - Share pictures and videos of your league games & teams.

• News page - keep all your website visitors in the know by sharing organizational news on your website.

• Sponsorship pages - this is a great way to also generate new revenue for your sports organization, selling sponsorship space on your website

Step 10 - Make sure your scores, standings, and schedules are all uploaded and up to date when building your sports website.

The majority of your website traffic is people looking for their schedule or their recent scores. If you're still updating the schedule and score changes manually, you run the risk of forgetting to change the schedule or to update a score. 

When you use a sports website builder like TeamLinkt, this manual process of updating schedules, scores, stats, and standings is all automated. Saving you a lot of time each season.

Conclusion

Sports organizations don't need a $10,000 website. You need a functional website that looks professional and works as intended.

By partnering with TeamLinkt, you get a great-looking sports website where you can run registration, update scores and schedules, and share all your league-related news.  Best of all you get this website for free and spun up in a matter of hours.

If you want to simplify the management of your season, book a one-on-one meeting with a member of our team today! Book Now