| January 14th 2000 |
| At long last Liverpool Football Club has an official web presence: liverpoolfc.net . But has it
been worth the wait?
RAOTL reviews the new site.
|
As we predicted as early as last Spring The
Mighty Reds web site has metamorphosed (eh?) into LFC's official web site - residing on
the internet as www.liverpoolfc.net. The idea of taking a very basic (dare I
say, amateurish) site and using it as a basis for an official site worried me. It smacked
of a lack of ambition and raised doubts about the club's understanding of the influence
and reach of the internet. You may remember we even added a link from our RAOTL pages to
GlamU's official site just to show you all - and LFC if they cared to check - what could
be achieved. Liverpool FC are a multi-million pound organisation and yet lag woefully
behind in technology. Until very, very recently there was no internal email system within
the club, no network of PCs. Memos, faxes and phone calls still ruled the roost. Is it any
wonder that they approached the issue of a web site with trepidation and caution? The transformation from a basic graphics-free, non-commercial LFC information site into a fully-blown web-presence for one of the world's leading football clubs should have been completed last summer. However, the Granada deal delayed this. It's understood that the club wanted to use Granada's formidable communications and marketing expertise in the site's development. "At last!", we all thought, "the penny has dropped". In delaying the launch by 6 months the club missed on using the internet's e-commerce capabilities over the Christmas period. With the club's surge in results since the early Autumn we'd witnessed a corresponding surge in the size of queues on matchdays snaking out of the Liverworld doors and around the perimeter of The Kop. How many 'Owen 10' and 'Camara 22' shirts could they have flogged over the net in the weeks leading up to Christmas? But as Rick Parry said when we broached the subject with him in the Autumn "There a lot of clubs selling over the internet - but not many of them are making money." To me this hinted that he realised the pitfalls and was determined to get it right. It's his job after all. So I'm sorry to have to tell you that, whilst being a massive improvement on the old MR site, liverpoolfc.net is a bit of a disappointment. I say that purely from a commercial point of view. I want the club to compete financially in the market place along with the likes of GlamU, Chelsea etc., and in order to do that it has to make money. So why have they launched an on-line shop with bugger all in it? You can buy team kit, training kit and ... er ... two holdalls, a shoebag and - ironically - an LFC wallet. No books, videos nor anything else. True - if you choose to enter the site using the Flash animations option the shop itself is amusing and technically impressive, with some interesting music. But there's little to tempt you away from your cash. In this sense it almost ranks up there with Python's cheese shop. A grandiose example of style over content if ever there was one. That quibble apart, what else is there? Well, there's the usual Mighty Reds full news, reports and stats but for old MR users the new layout means that you have to hunt around for whatever it is your after. The archive (unless you know exact dates) might prove irritating as you have to select dates from a calendar in order to browse stories and reports. There's good general information on the club itself: a brief history and roll of honour (but all too brief in my view, particularly for an official site. Sell yourself, Liverpool!) and a full squad photo gallery. All the club's commercial avenues get their own pages (Development Association, Conference suites, banqueting etc). The museum gets a very brief mention but this is hardly enough to entice you actually book to visit. But let's be charitable; it's a new site and I would hope these pages would expand in time. The nicest surprise of all is the downloads (if you're looking - go straight to the 'LFC Experience' link and root through the index. All 3 of the music tracks (MP3 files) used in the on-line shop are available for download (expect about 10-15 mins per track on a 56k modem). There are also a number of wallpapers to download including a rather grand picture of The Kop taken at the GlamU game this season. Other wallpapers include: The Shankly Gates, Reds' dressing room, 1999 team photo and several player action shots. Also available for download are two screensavers: 'Shankly's Ghost' and 'Saint Danny' (Murphy). Both are fine and will be installed on my PC at work asap. I heard, on a recent radio match commentary, Ric George described as 'Liverpool's internet correspondent'. I know he's moved from The Echo - and let's pray that Chris Bascombe gets his old job - but it now looks like he's become liverpoolfc.net's on-line correspondent. He's featured in the 'News' section with exclusive interviews with Owen and Houllier. So we're not rid of him, yet. And talking of radio commentary - at last there are match commentaries available, but only for 500 concurrent on-line users and still just the old MR text commentaries - hardly enough for our immense world-wide following. Will it be enough to keep Norman Spencer in Toronto happy. I think not. I understand that a Real Audio feed may be available in the near future - let's hope so. A big disappointment is the loss of the old MR 'Links' page. There's just half a dozen links featured now and the RAOTL link had vanished. The choice of links seems arbitrary too. Lots of decent Reds' sites have now vanished. God help you if you never bookmarked your favourite. RAOTL do have a link from a 'Fanzines' page but you'd have to hunt around to find us. Overall - the Flash animations apart - it still looks just like The Mighty Reds site has been given a massive wash and brush up. Pages are now deep red, rather than white, giving the improved graphics and photos a better chance of seeming integral elements in the pages (Rather than the cut'n'paste newsletter effect that we use here at RAOTL). It's a good site, but for a club of Liverpool's stature it's not good enough. At least it's a start. (Dot Comme) |
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