Iʼm an avid fan of the Olympic Games and naturally, I like to keep up with the latest news from the Games by checking out news websites, twitter feeds and watching this site — the Team GB Olympic Games site. As someone who is pretty aware of what makes a good website, I wanted to do a redesign of the Team GB page to clear a few things up and to make it generally easier to use.
The Vancouver 2010 Team GB Website
Above is what the a user will see when loading the site up. Firstly, itʼs not immediately obvious what the site is about — we see slogans such as “The Best of British” and “Be Your Personal Best” right in the centre, which a user is most likely to see first. However, pushed over to the left is a small Team GB logo, which at first glance doesnʼt really mean anything. To really have any real ʻpresenceʼ this logo needs placed directly in the centre without anything to the left or right of it. The royal red and blue lion suits well, however a different typeface could be used to enhance the brand not only on the website but through the actual Games on billboards & television appearances as well. Gill Sans is a font which I think would suit well — popularised by other British brands such as the London transport authority, the font face is easily readable and instantly recognisable.
Gill Sans typeface
The “social media” bar at the top of the website is useful, but I donʼt think itʼs full potential is being harnessed particularly well. Moving the bar below the main title / logo area allows for bigger buttons and bigger presence. More emphasis needs to be placed on these buttons — although a twitter feed has been placed on the right hand side of the page, replacing the “Latest news” section with tweets would save time and be more streamlined. Also, embedding the latest YouTube videos and Facebook posts would be beneficial to the site; driving more traffic to these outlets and providing userswith lots of content!
Of course, above this would be the navigation bar. Currently, itʼs pretty vague (& it breaks in Chrome — blogs is pushed to the next line). This bar can be simplified into about four or five blocks: Firstly, I really donʼt see the need of a “Home” button on any website nowadays. We have been socialised almost, into knowing that clicking on a recurrent logo / title will take us back to the main page — hence, this button is unnecessary. “News” is okay as it is, however “Results” and “Schedule” should be included under this, as “News” is basically an umbrella. Again, “Vancouver 2010” is sort of an umbrella under which “Sports” could be put. “Gallery” and “Video” should just be under one tab of “Media” — or, they could just redirect to the appropriate YouTube and Flickr (which they donʼt currently use) accounts. “Blogs” can be keptseparate and so can “Messages” — The site seems to make a big deal about these messages further down the page — postcards which people can send in to athletes. However, many users will glance at this in the navigation bar and will not really investigate it further unless theyʼre genuinely interested. This button needs to be either completely separate from the bar, having itʼs own space below or to the side, or needs to be made more ʻobviousʼ.
Title redesigns
Going down the page, you see that they have basically tried to include everything on the front page. The user has to scroll down to see content which they may or may not actually want to see — when a user opens the page, they should immediately see what is currently most important, and there should be nothing else cluttering up the page. “12 Brits to Watch” in my opinion isnʼt that important and neither is the “Have Your Say” & the 90s-esque poll. All unnecessary. Ditch the message-board for Twitter replies and Facebook comments, and add share links to Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Digg etc near the top of the page not right at the bottom! The images section should be linked to a Flickr account, with all photos (and I know that this sounds a little enthusiastic) available as Creative Commons and at full-resolution. Removing the Newsletter for RSS feeds will also save space.
Team GB website redesign
Iʼm sure that towards 2012 and the London Olympics, this website will be completely redesigned and will most likely harness social media and provide a quick method for users to get their news. However, above is my semi-complete redesign of the landing page. Itʼs much cleaner and clearer — with only nine links compared to a previous 15 in the header of the page. Font faces have been streamlined and so have colours — establishing a recognisable brand. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr integration are included with options to share stories / blog posts to other social networks providing users with an easy springboard to get the news they want to share to the people they want to share it to quickly and easily.
What do you think of the redesign? What would you do to improve the original website and to improve my redesign? Leave your views in the comments!
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