Website updates and feedback required

Hello my fellow Horfield wood pushers!

I hope you are all enjoying the new website this season and finding everything easy to use.  I wanted to write a quick update about some recent changes and ask for some opinions on some issues:

• I have added the “Little Team Cup” competition to the site with links to the Google Spreadsheet that contains the table and results.  This is a great initiative that allows our players to enjoy competitive chess even when there are no league fixtures on.  It is also especially welcoming to new members to the club. Please do check it out here
• I have added lots of nice new photos and descriptions of players to the various team pages but we still have gaps (and also have had quite a few new joiners since the start of the season).  If you are new to Horfield or haven’t got a photo then please email them through to your respective captains and I can add them to the site.
• My thanks to all the Team Captains who are regularly supplying timely match reports.  It makes such a difference having regular content popping up.  One thing I will say is that the reports are so much nicer when people are willing to share a game or a photo of a position.  It makes the reports really engaging.  At the moment I get the occasional Div 1 game supplied by the A and B teams but nothing from the other teams.  Please do think about that if your game has been particularly exciting or dramatic!

Improving the website

Finally I have two requests that I welcome feedback on:

• We currently have adverts on the site.  I can remove these from the site but this will be for a fixed fee per annum.  It is likely to be in the order of £36 (£3 a month).  I think an advert free site looks a lot cleaner and professional but welcome feedback from the clubs members;
• I can get lots of nice extra features for the website if we want such as playable chess boards, voting polls and surveys and other cool things.  This requires me upgrading my membership to WordPress which can be expensive to get everything we may want.  Whilst I am willing to absorb some of the cost, I don’t want to proceed if people are happy with the site as it is?  This cost is likely to by over £100 per annum.

Statistics

Everyone loves statistics right!  Following on from my request for feedback above I thought it would be good to tell you statistics since we revamped the site after the last AGM in May:

• We have had 1644 unique visitors
• We have had 9006 views or 5.48 views per visitor (this is good!)
• Our contact us page has been visited 181 times and created 12 leads for new club members (I haven’t tracked who calls us instead of using the form), some of whom are now playing regularly at the club.
• Our most popular blog post was our report on Horfield B vs. Clevedon A with 178 views
• Match reports with images and games average 106 views
• Match reports with no images or games average 69 views

Thanks for reading and please leave any comments below