Outside the Box

Outside the Box - What makes a good baseball website

"Vic" asked me what makes a good baseball website. Since I have the bully pulpit, here is my response.

My opinion is that simpler is better. I feel a site is much better off worrying about the service rather than the look of the site. For instance, I am constantly amazed at the utility of Yahoo. I use myYahoo and I can't imagine not using it more. Yahoo's graphic design is almost absurdly simplistic, but they understand that people are there to look at their services and not their design. I'm a pretty big baseball stats nut, so for this site I was worried most about how I wanted to use a site. I also tried not to constrict users in any way. The web is inherently non-linear, so lots and lots of links allow users to achieve a "Flow". I've also found that stating the obvious is important even when it appears obvious.

Testing is vitally important. I test my relatives on this site. I see how they look for things and whether they can find it or not. I know this site so well, that it is impossible for me to realize when something is clear or unclear.

As this page indicates, user feedback is important. My new site will have comments on every article.

Some of my sites haven't worked as well as I've expected, IowaFarmReport.com and theHILL are the two main ones. At IFR, I wanted user input on minor league players. I had envisioned a batallion of citizen scouts filing reports from games they saw. It just didn't happen. I think the main reason is that people saw no benefit to themselves for doing so. I'm not sure how to change that fact. With theHILL I think the information is just a little too esoteric for most people. Retrosheet is a great organization, but it's information is too specialized for all but a fractional percent of baseball fans.

For other sites, I would recommend concentrating on whatever service you provide. A link encouraging user input should be on nearly every page on the site. Users have great ideas and if they feel their feedback is valued they can give you some great ideas and point out problems you might not have seen before.

For statistics, I think making the information as unfettered as possible is the only way to go. If you don't do that somebody will come along and try to make it more useful.

Books I would recommend include: Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen (his site useit.com is very helpful), Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun, and the Cluetrain Manifesto. There are a lot of others that I've used, but these are the three best. Clickz.com has some good info as well.