With the 2009-10 season more than a quarter done already, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at each team’s website and determine a winner based layout, design, content, menu, etc. Here is a hint. The winner was also the winner last year and by that I mean NBA champions.
I found the Lakers to be the best of the best when it came to design elements, layout/presentation and overall reinforcing the brand of the team throughout the website. The only thing I didn’t like as much as other team sites was their menu. With every NBA team rotating ads on their respective sites, I found the Lakers to be the least intrusive. Although I noticed the ads, I never felt like it was distracting when pouring through their content. Other teams could definitely learn a thing here from the champs.
A few other things they do very well is make it easy for season ticket holders and ticket exchange users to find the login for these services.
In looking at each site, there are certainly a few worth of notable mention. The Milwaukee Bucks and Houston Rockets which share a similar overall design with a handful of other teams did an excellent job with presentation and layout. Their multi-column menu system is the best that I found. Each of these teams presents their content in a very clean manner. Again ads do not stand out.
There are two sites that could use a little work. The Miami Heat and Portland Trailblazers seemed to lack creating a level of excitment on their team websites. Team branding and design creativity along with too much white fonts on black backgrounds hampered their sites.
Aside from overall ratings, there were a few other notables. 9 teams (Nets, Raptors, Pistons, Heat, Wizards, Mavs, Rockets, Warriors, and Kings) utilized splash pages to promote ticket packages or events. Some did this more effectively than others. The Rockets also did a good job of promoting their multi-lingual sites.