Welcome to Around the Table, our series of articles on our work to promote and support table tennis around the country. In this edition, we look at the creation of our new website, which launched in February.
Why does Table Tennis England need a new website?
A number of reasons. First, the site was getting increasingly difficult to navigate as more and more content was added. It needed to be reorganised to make it easier for visitors to find what they were looking for more easily – and if they weren’t sure what they were looking for, to make it easier to understand the structure.
Secondly, the website was not responsive to mobiles and tablets, making it hard to view on those devices. As more and more people are accessing the website from phones and tablets, we urgently needed to upgrade
Also, the design of the website was getting a bit outdated – a makeover gives it a cleaner, fresher feel and complements the new easier structure.
What sort of improvements have been made?
A big change was introducing the principle that it should be possible to navigate to any page on the website within three clicks. This required setting up easier-to-understand menus and sections, allowing visitors to find the information they are looking for quickly.
We have tried to make things easier for players – making it easier to search for a competition and to filter events by location, age group and type of tournament. Our rankings pages are also fully searchable, so it is much more straightforward for players to plan their season and monitor their progress.
Where it is necessary to include a lot of information on pages, we have introduced the means to attach documents in an easy-to-follow and easy-to-download manner.
And we have also introduced a searchable index for job and volunteering opportunities in the sport.
Who was responsible for revamping the website?
This was carried out in-house by the communications team. Primarily, Jamie Gordon was responsible for designing and building the structure. The content was collated by every department at Table Tennis England to ensure it was relevant and up-to-date.
How much did this cost?
The financial outlay was minimal and related to updating existing software and modifying hosting arrangements with our IT providers.
Is the project finished?
The new website has now been launched, but that is not the end of the project. We will be introducing new features over time, including a table finder function and e-commerce functions.
As this is an ongoing project, a small number of pages will continue to display on the old template for a short time as we work to finalise the updated website.
In the meantime, if there is something you would expect to see on our website, but cannot find – or if you find any incorrect information – please drop us a line.