These days, it’s unusual to find a youth league that doesn’t have a website. People expect to find what they’re looking for online. And when they don’t, they question the credibility of the organization.
Parents want the convenience of going online to register their child, check schedules, find information on rosters. The league website is also the place to visit to share and view photos and connect with the community of others involved in the league.
Unfortunately, building a website from scratch can be costly. However, there’s an alternative to building a website from the ground up. League management software offers a cloud-based league management solution for leagues, teams, and associations that help them create websites, enable online registration, and manage schedules.
Here are steps to running a website for your youth league using league management software:
Find the right software
Choose the software that fits your needs. Not all league management solutions will offer website capabilities. Consider your requirements and budget when picking the right software. Features will range from the most basic to advanced. The good news is that even the solutions that offer advanced features don’t require that you have programming skills and are fairly easy to run and maintain yourself.
Promote individual team pages
Teams no longer need to build their own website if their league already has one. Your sports league website can have individual team pages where each team will have their own community of players, coaches, and parents. Updates, videos, pictures, and schedules can be posted on the team pages.
It’s important that your organization encourage parents and coaches to keep their team pages up-to-date so keep everyone well-informed and involved.
Update schedules, stats, and results
Your youth league community of parents, coaches, and players will rely on your website to keep them updates on schedules, standings, statistics, and game results. It is ideal to have a dedicated member of your staff to manage the website so that it doesn’t go ignored and outdated.
Some league management platforms even offer a live update feature. It will give your website a big league site feel. It’s also quite the treat for fans such as relatives who live far away and can’t make it to the game to feel they haven’t completely missed it. They can follow the game play-by-play in real-time.
What features do you need for your youth league website?