SportingPulse Brand Refresh

Hi all,

Over the next few days, you'll begin to see the first of a number of changes on SportingPulse as we launch our new Network portal and begin the process of re-branding our products.

Its a long story and has been a good process to go through - but for now, we'll make it as succinct as possible...

www.sportingpulse.com is changing:
Traditionally, SportingPulse has been a provider of leading sports technology tools to sport; from grassroots clubs through to International Governing Bodies.  Excellent.

Current site - Focus on technology

However, in the recent past, we have turned our business model around in order to be able to fund the use of our tools at no cost, through aligning with commercial partners who integrate messages through branding assets (such as the successful 'Top of the Bailey Ladder' competition).  On top of our free software services, our goal is to bring a new source of funding for sport at all levels of the game - and we will achieve this over time.

Currently (as above) our homepage reflects the technical side of our business only; but realistically nowadays the SportingPulse brand wears 3 hats.  So, we've re-aligned our site as follows:


1/ The SportingPulse Network (for players):
The power of SportingPulse to our commercial partners is in the result of our aggregated network.
For example benefits to sport, such as our YouTube Partnership and the provision of free software to sport was achieved through the power of our aggregated, 3 million strong community and the need of commercial partners to have their brand integrated and acknowledged.


2/ Sports Solutions (for sport):
This section of the site deals with the traditional arm of our business; software solutions of high value to sport, how to use them, or how to get started.


3/ Marketing Solutions (for partners):
We have many brands that want to partner with SportingPulse and we are committed to achieving this in the most beneficial way for the brand, and also for sport.  Sport is our business, so continuing to find ways to introduce brands to sport in an integrated way and to the benefit of sport is our core objective.

New site - Focus on Network

Names of the products you use are changing:
Over a period of 10 years, our brand has become very wide and fragmented.  We have many naming conventions that do not house SportingPulse in any way.

We have brand fragmentation!

We are simplifying our brand in that products such as 'Sportzware Membership' and 'PayMySport' (both SportingPulse products!), will fall under a simpler naming convention - SportingPulse Membership and SportingPulse Payments.

Our research shows that overwhelmingly, the SportingPulse brand is trusted and highly recognisable.  We are blown away by this, as we had always considered ourselves to be powering sport (i.e. in the background) - and perhaps hadn't valued our own brand and what we've stood for over a long period of time.

So, we want to put the SportingPulse name back into the mix, especially when it comes to very important sport processes, such as Online Registration and Payment of season fees.

This does not affect our partners and brands such as FootyWeb, The Basketball Network, or LeagueNet.  Its just a way for SportingPulse to align our properties so we are able to consolidate our brand into the future.

Brand alignment

Following on from this, we'll be applying new brand and styling guidelines to our total product suite.  As you can imagine, we'll be rolling this out over some time, so its a blog for another day!

We are building destinations:

We have a lot of GREAT aggregated data - a lot of great news and advice within the network.  We also try to help where we can, whether by setting an example in not supporting alcohol or gambling advertising in our network, or supporting sport and government initiatives where its required.

To achieve our goals of displaying great stats and aggregated news, we're building destinations by sport, and also across advice verticals.


You will have seen GameDay, which is based around news and advice for sport, plus housing competitions and microsites for our partners.

GameDay - sport advice and competitions

We're also building destinations on a sport-by-sport basis that will aggregate news, results and stats from around the portal and become a hub for sports in the future.

AFL aggregation in the SportingPulse Network

These destinations are aligned with the brand guidelines and we believe will add value to both the Network and commercial partnerships.




We'll give you more information as we continue to move forward.
Firstly, you will see the a new sportingpulse.com.  From there, the SportingPulse brand will be re-established as powering certain sites, or the brand itself replace existing product names you may be familiar with.

Its a big job, and we want you to be a part of it by providing feedback as we continue to work on our product suite.  Thanks for reading!

(Any questions?  Ask them here, or contact our Customer Service Team - support@sportingpulse.com)

Under the bonnet - New Registration Form releases

A number of functions have been added to our Registration Form platform and are now up and running in your database.

1. Mandatory Products
The first of these changes, which applies to both Clubs and Associations, is the ability to now add mandatory products to your registration form. In the ‘Products’ menu of a your Registration Form you will see the screen below, which now has a column marked ‘Make Mandatory on Form’.

Ticking a product to make it mandatory will make the product appear ‘Already in cart’ and will be automatically selected when a member registers. This can be a useful tool if you have a set of fees that you would like all members to pay or if you’d like to make the online payment of your registration fees compulsory.



2. Seasons for Members registering to Team
The second of the additions, which is particularly relevant for Associations, is a change in the way players are assigned to a season when registering via a Member to Team form. When a member registers through a Member to Team form, they will be assigned to the ‘New Registration Season’ selected for the association and the season/s that team are registered to. Basically this just means that it will be easier to identify the season/s a member was part of a team for and that if for instance Team ABC is in season 2012, then when a member registers to that team, the member will also be part of season 2012.

3. Mandatory Club Drop Box
The third of these changes, also particularly relevant for Associations, is the addition of a ‘Make Club Mandatory’ option on a Team to Association registration form. This is a particularly useful option for those sports that accept team registrations through their online database and sync it with their offline Sportzware Central database. It will ensure members who register to a team online will be listed in those teams in their Sportzware Central database.

You can find this functionality by navigating to the ‘Edit’ screen of your Team to Association form where you will see a ‘Make Club Mandatory’ box (as shown below).



Ticking the box will then make the ‘Club Name’ drop box appear on your registration form as a compulsory field (shown below) and a club from the list must be selected by the member to complete the form.

If all this is too confusing give our Customer Support Team a yell and we'll go through it in more detail.

Under the bonnet - More Menus

Hi all,

A quick update on Sportzware Website menus.

Earlier this year, we did a major overhaul of sites - and I must say its been fantastic for engagement, traffic and importantly, your feedback.

There's opportunities to continually improve your presence - here's a tip about what some of you may see on your sites - More Menus

Firstly - More menus was around the convension of not allowing menu bars to scroll to a second line. We wanted people to think about the structure of their sites...its rare to see a website with 14 main menu items as it can confuse the user.

Instead, in the transitional period, we 'rolled up' menu items that would spill to a second line under what we called 'More Menus' - we expected most would be gone now.

VFL Website with 'More Menus'

However, there are still quite a few examples of it throughout the Network and we want to encourage you to go into your website editor; have a look at your menu structure and see if you can come up with a maximum of 8 or 9 topics.

Start with those main headings and then add other items into a sub nav.. e.g. 'Office Bearers' may be under an Administration menu..

VFL Website - 'More Menus' removed

We give you the flexibility to have as many menu items and sub nav items as you need; however - your users and fans will appreciate it if you give them some strong themes in your main menu, with sub navigation items tucked in underneath.

Don't know how to do this? No problem, you can read more on the wiki on Customising Your Website or contact our Customer Service Team.

Cheers, Andrew