Blue is the colour. The website isn’t the game.
So I may support Chelsea on the pitch, but on their website? Oh dear me. It’s as though they got someone who has just learnt flash to build it – to use as many flash animations as possible. And any website designer that incorporates a link on their splash page (why oh why a splash page) that says “check out the site demo” and a first message “learn how to navigate through ChelseaFC.com” needs to be questioned. Learn how to navigate a web site? Oh please!
The nature of football fans is their brand loyalty, but to give them something that visibly takes time to load (page loading status bar), requires instructions to learn how to use, and doesn’t make things easy – support me achieve my goals – is frankly insulting.
Oh, and they’ve got a text only version (the CFC Flash website isn’t going to win awards for accesibility so one can only presume this is the only reason it is provided) but the splashpage requires JavaScript to load up, so no JS and no website, regardless of any text-only goodness that may be there. So not an accesible website then.
Meanwhile the community stuff that supporters care about (beyond the news and match reports, it’s probably going to be the most sticky content) is a seperate site that looks like it was built in the early days of the web. I mean, who uses frames anymore.
Sorry Chels, poor show. Your league status doesn’t extend to your on-line prescence.