The Iowa High School Athletic Association serves as the powerhouse for all things having to do with Iowa boys’ sports. Their website needs to support and complement dozens of needs; coaches and administrators need a database login, officials need information and access to an online application through a website portal, parents and athletes need sport-specific news and updates, and thousands of documents need a home.
The Challenge
As years tick by in the life of any organization, it can be easy to fall into the trap of dumping anything and everything into your website simply because there may not be another place to put it. This might not cause a huge problem for a small to medium-sized business site, but for as large an organization as the Iowa High School Athletic Association it can start to feel like organized (or perhaps less than organized) chaos.
The IHSAA staff were not only faced with an outdated website that needed better organization for its pages, but they also deserved a better and more organized system for thousands of PDFs dating back years and years into Iowa’s high school boys athletic history. Webspec worked closely with the communications team at IHSAA to thoroughly and strategically overhaul, organize, and modernize everything from the look and feel of the website to the way documents are stored and updated and more.
Summary of Solutions
- Prioritization and organization of content by sport, category, and regular/postseason information
- Improved flow of information based on user needs
- Mobile-responsive design to accommodate for large mobile user audience
- User-friendly design via clearly divided sections and flow of information
- Focus on color contrast to serve users with visual difficulties
- Ability for the website to remain flexible as sport seasons rotate
- Improved hosting & storage space to accommodate for large amounts of website traffic
Before & After
As a result of the new website project with our team, the IHSAA staff walked away victorious over years of archived content and a multitude of needs from various users. Not only does the new live website feature improved ADA compliance, modern design, and appropriate ad space for sponsors, it also provides a permanent structure and solution when it comes to the organization of sport updates, information, PDFs, and archives.
