Technology and Soccer – Cal North Raises Its Game
Cal North kicks off a beautiful new responsive website and scores big with soccer coaches, soccer players and soccer families.
Since its first year of inception in 1969, Cal North has grown to be one of the largest state youth soccer organizations in the United States, counting more than 163,000 players annually, ages 4-19, and over 42,000 administrators, coaches and volunteers in 132 member leagues of registration. The leadership at Cal North are dedicated to assisting parents in developing the potential of all kids — as individuals, and not just soccer players. Cal North’s goal is for all soccer players at every level of the game to develop their passion and skill in a fun, safe and healthy environment.
Cal North‘s motto is “Kids First” and this focus has helped the US Youth Soccer State Association for Northern California refocus to create a better organization.
With nearly 200,000 soccer loving members in Cal North, communication is very important to Matthew Madeira, Executive Director of Cal North. The best tool for reaching nearly a quarter million people? The internet. Unlike many other state associations whose websites are difficult to read and navigate on a desktop, let alone a mobile device, Cal North undertook the job of rebranding its site and embracing technology.
With the latest news, important deadlines and league information easy to find, the new Cal North website kicked off this fall delivers state of the art design for grateful parents, players and coaches. What are the most popular pages? Here is the list of the five most read pages:
1) CCSL Applied Teams, Schedules and Results
2) ODP Tryouts and Player Pool Info
3) California Regional League (CRL) Applied Teams, Schedules and Results
4) League Finder Tool – how parents and players find leagues in Cal North
5) District Directory – listing of soccer information by Cal North Districts.
All the most popular pages are data driven with information coaches, players and parents need on a regular basis – but Cal North wanted to provide more than just results and included articles on Tony DiCicco being a featured speaker for the upcoming 2016 Soccer Expo and a fun take on the dreaded, “When You Forget Your Soccer Shoes.”
“We had a few goals we were hoping to accomplish,” said Emanuel Lusca, Cal North Registration and Data Systems Manager. “The first was creating an online experience that was highly responsive for mobile device users. Our new site utilizes mobile responsive design, which changes the layout of our site depending on screen size. The second goal was improving the overall user experience by incorporating a minimalist and flat design concept. The idea here was that less is more. The less content we included, the more focused our site is with what we feel is of value. We analyzed analytics data from our previous website to determine what our users thought was of value, excluded what wasn’t, and then setup our menu according to the conclusions that were drawn from the analysis.”
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make when retooling their websites? “Youth organizations tend to think of their website as a project with a clear cut end — with only a few pages which require updating with results and new listings, such as a tournament list or league results,” said Charles Ducant, analyst for Websense Research. “This doesn’t encourage discovering relevant information nor successful visitor engagement.” Cal North did not fall into this trap.
“I also think one big and very important change that I’m very happy about is that we are now approaching our website as an ongoing project in terms of development. A site isn’t just built and used, it’s more of a living organism with parts that grow and evolve. There is a lot more that we have planned for our website and are looking forward to see how all of it will develop over time.”
Related Article: CAL NORTH – THE VOICES OF THE BOARD
