Thetownend.com

Evening all,
It's not boardroom or manatee-related, sadly, but the new-look Link Sport site goes live overnight (www.swindonlinksport.com) and I'd appreciate your varying degrees of informed feedback. Anything to do with appearance and 'user experience' - I hate that phrase - would be gratefully received.
Equally, those of you who might have had a look at it over the past 12 weeks, what would attract you back more often content-wise? What can be done better? What's not being done at all that should be?
Thanks in advance, enjoy the weekend off.
Sam

There seems to be a few news and sports sites now in Swindon. Trouble is they're almost all identical in what they do.
Read one and you've read them all really.
The adver is pretty dire now mind with some glaring errors on a daily basis where their news is concerned. It's like people who have never even been in the town are reporting on articles. locations of stories are regularly completely wrong or misspelled for instance.

I check adver site and linksport daily now, guess your in the same press conferences so difficult to have an exclusive.  Like the interviews with people from the past, also noticed adver copied this.

I do love the bredth of coverage we have now, but do wonder how long it can be sustained on the medium-sized (my definition) fanbase that we have.  Sooner or later, there is going to be some consolidation, surely?  The Washbag is a fanzine and doesn't go in for reporting or breaking 'news' as such, so it will probably carry on along side everything else.  But my guess is that one of the Adver, Link Sport and FLIC Wiltshire would probably fall away at some point.

The adver is atrocious. Their over dramatic and misleading headlines have gotten on my tits for a long time. Since Sam left, we still have the same crappy headlines with the added problem that none of them appear to give a flying fuck about either the club or the quality of work they produce.

Very true in terms of a lot of similar stuff - that comes from sharing press conferences, like the nationals but in condensed form in a League One club. That's why we've tried to be different, with audio clips online, instant player ratings, more opinion, blogs, comment, stuff like the 'five things we've learnt' - to try to offer a variety.
The club is getting more open to offering access to players on an individual by individual basis, so that might help things, but we're trying to offer what we wanted to at the Adver but couldn't due to staffing issues and daft workloads. Hopefully, in time, we will win people over with the way we do things.

I agree.  It's really sad, and I take no pleasure at all in seeing a local institution like the Adver going so badly downhill.  The Reading Post has already shut down as a print edition newspaper, and the Adver will probably go the same way before long.

It all has to come down to economics...and that is what I was trying to drive at with the earlier post.  I doubt that either Sam or Andrew Steele-Davis are working for the love of it (although I know they're both fans).  I'm sure that they have bills to pay like everyone else.  I just can't see how each of the outlets that currently exist along side of each other can continue to do so in the longer term.  Where are the revenues coming from to support the operations?  If we were Man U, or even West Brom, you could understand.  But we're not.

We're not going anywhere fast, he says, crossing his fingers and doing a page-view dance.

I think you'll be OK, Sam.

I assume you go to the Adver for their "bredth" of coverage, and the others for their breadth of coverage...

Don't write off the Adver just yet....after all they did see off the Swindon Echo and Swindon Mercury.

Fuck me.  Reg has turned in to Lynne Truss.

I guess James Phipps sees a future (and a profit) in Link, otherwise he wouldn't have bought it.

It's plain to see that the future is online media and the town's current main news outlet isn't exactly capitalising in this area.

I've enjoyed the interviews of recent former players. Migs was very insightful.

 Adver is gash at the moment, online and print

Between link sport and flic there is plenty of good coverage from ppl who actually have an interest in the club.
The interviews with ex players being a current fave of mine

Healthy competition is no bad thing.  But most of us only have limited time to read stuff.  We now have Linksport, FLIC, The Adver - and, today, I came across a link to  http://www.swindontownforum.com/  for the first time.  Haven't really checked that one out yet.  

I have found recently that the Linksport site has become my first port of call.  So, I'll be interested to see what the new site looks like tomorrow.  The Adver reporting is now very poor compared to what it used to be and I spend much less time there these days as a result.  As Sam says, there is bound to be some cross-over due to shared press conferences - not to mention instances of apparent plagarism.  That said, it was noticeable, for example, that both sites started running instant player ratings and listing post-match Twitter posts around the same time.  

The variety of articles on the Linksport site is better than the Adver's and have fewer glaring factual errors.  Maybe that's down to the Adver guys having to cover other subjects as well as STFC.  That said, they seem to send two people to every away game, these days, which seems a bit OTT.

Totally agree, last week for instance they did the lighting up times and must have used something for April or mid-September - but what do you expect from a newspaper that is actually produced in Oxford!!

After a period of increasingly decent reporting - Anthony Marshall, Gary Rose then Sam - the Adver's sports pages are now showing the depth of the recession in the regional press. The current no-names seem to have had a charismectomy. My personal bugbear is the repeated misspelling of opposition and ex-players they've clearly never heard of. They have no grasp of social media and have no relationship with fans, which Sam built up so well. Of course, it helped that he was a born and bred fan. I support my roots, so I get my news from Sam.

It's not so much the lack of social media integration with the adver that bothers me, it's more the lack of the ability to write in English.

I only read the thisis site now but the comments there are now more reasonable and coherent than the articles, which is terrifying. I really think it'd be dead already if it weren't for virtue of habit, which is sad but inevitable.

As for linksport I think the features on offer are great. I think the execution is more important than having a gazillion unique features frankly - what I have read seems to be high quality, though sometimes I think Sam could ease off on the metaphors. He's like a child in a sweet shop that's already had too much lemonade.

I do look forward to seeing some design changes, as though it was nice to look at it wasn't always the fastest most intuitive page to navigate.

I'm quite sure they have the ability.

What they do lack is a shit to give.

I do like lemonade. And sweets. Metaphors are a vice of mine, and it's hard to kick a habit. Point taken, though. Thanks.

Yep, the new site looks OK and is easy to navigate around.  The important bit, though, is the quality, variety and accuracy of the content.  So far, so good, Sam. 

Oh, and Ells, don't you know that over-indulgence with metaphors goes very much with the territory?  You are probably too young to have been around when one of Sam's predecessors, Clive King, was the Adver's main football reporter.  If you think that Sam overuses them, you should have seen Kingy's work!  He was a master.   ;D

Much easier to navigate now Sam. Less clunky and much easier on the eye.

Might need to be careful with putting text over pictures on the main page though. Sometimes it is hard to read if the wrong colour is chosen. Other than that though, a marked improvement.

Oh, and some club logos with a transparent background wouldn't go amiss

Link has now become my first port of call and being at work with at times limited time to check out the football news Link I find is the go to site for interesting articles.

I like it that Sam is offering something different, and I think it helps him that he is a respected journo in these parts and has built a reputation.

Just a little more attention to detail is required though, first article I have read on new site (POM Panel) seems littered with grammar errors (sorry Sam), the adver were / are notorius for it Link have been good at proof reading so far.

Really? Such as?

I just looked and couldn't find a single error.

Couldn't resist.

Thanks for your comments, everyone. Please keep them coming. For those interested, the site does have proper RSS. Currently it's for the whole site but we're splitting it into individual sports in next few days. Whoever the mod is for the news feed who might want it to adapt that section on here, PM me and I'll pop it across. You might not want it, anyway.

OK so first impressions are that its much less cluttered than the old site. I like that each sports is clearly laid out in sections, and the drop down menus provide quick navigation to where you need to be.

I don't like the STFC News section from the front page, the headlines are shortened with ellipses. Not the end of the world, bit inconsistent with the other sports. Don't like the "dot"  buttons to scroll through these front page headlines either, but the fact is I can click on "STFC latest news" anyway.

I usually view the site on a PC/Laptop.

I'm not yet in the habit of going directly to swindonlinksport.com as my first stop for STFC news yet. Its not content related, its purely that old habits die hard. The Adver (boooo) are pretty poor of late so I don't go on there as much either. I guess I pick up a lot of stories from twitter now (I mean your/links tweets linking back to the site).

Incidentally the site is OK on my mobile (Android lollipop with stock Chrome browser). Still don't like the truncated headlines, but the dropdown while not obvious contains all sports under one menu, STFC first as it should be.

Thanks for the feedback, all very much appreciated. The carousel thing at the top will soon be adapted to have top stories rather than newest stories, too, which might help with your first point. Equally, Andy and I have to learn to write correct-length headlines to fit in 'STFC News'-sized headlines.

Re linking through social media, obviously it's our intention to get people to bookmark the site in time so we aren't reliant on Twitter traffic to feed the site, so hopefully you'll migrate over one day. But old habits do die hard, I agree, and taking the Adver traffic on that is going to be one long, hard, drawn-out process. But I'm sure the competition can only be healthy, as every Town player has said...ever.

I still go to the adver first on a weekday as Im unlikely to have to read about speedway or ice hockey.  Ive no interest in either of those teams and only went to Blunsdon a couple of times to watch the dogs.

I'm not sure how many people go to the speedway, but the ice hockey has to about 500 per match jusding by the size of the link centre.

Today is quite momentous, I memorised Swindon Link Sport's address. Yes I realise it wasn't exactly ciphered in Tunny code, but now I remember it and its easier to use I'll be going there a lot more. So that's good.

And I look forward to some inventive STFC News sized headline :)

You've not discovered bookmarks yet then Batch?  ;)

Oh yes, I have about 60, and I'm too lazy to organise them. They have become totally pointless. In fact here are some random ones:

http://seit.unsw.adfa.edu.au/staff/sites/lpb/src/DEScalc/DEScalc.html
http://www.cagesworld.co.uk/c/Chinchilla_Cages.htm?affiliate=adwords&gclid=CLT6lc3Am68CFYEKfAodQRXIdA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJwKtSMBz0U

Living on the edge, hell yeah

I know exactly what you mean as it happens. I've a habit of bookmarking stuff while browsing when drunk thinking I might find it interesting some other time. Of course, I forget all about them. I have hundreds. Literally hundreds.

soapy tit wank, I do have swindonlinksport.com in there already. I only just fount it.

QED.

Of course, the Adver do cover both of those two sides, too, but presume you go straight to thisisstfc. You can quickly bookmark our Swindon Town subsection if you want to avoid the Robins and Wildcats, we'd love to have you. It's http://212.48.71.102/~swindonsport/category/swindon-town/ currently.
Thanks
(FYI... online, the speedway and Town news attract an almost identical audience in-season - that was the same when we were at the Adver as it is over at Link Sport)

That surprises me Sam

Continues to surprise me, too. But, given it's an Elite League team, it seems speedway fans across the country tune in to each others' news, whereas only Town fans deal in Town news.

Sam, any news on powers trip to Australia?

If the Ice Hockey get crowds of 500, I'd be surprised. I'd imagine that's pretty good for them?

Has the site gone down?  Getting a 404 not available...

OK for me

Scratch that, it's back whatever the problem was...  Not ruling out it could have been me :D