Website Analysis - Manchester United

Manchester United as one of the most popular football teams in the world has done well to promote their image through effective Internet Marketing as has been revealed through the website analysis done on the Manchester United website.

Upon landing on the entering page the user immediately becomes of aware of the dominance of red and black. The enter page loads fast and provides a captivating first contact with the website. Unfortunately the usage of an enter page can hamper search engine optimisation of a site because there are hardly any words for indexing by the spiders. Although Google Universal Search now makes it possible to also search for images and videos, the website with at least 250 words on a page, still has the chance of doing better with the majority of search engines. That being said, the enter page fortunately also provides quick access options to specific pages of the website through image links.

Branding is an important part of Internet Marketing and by repeating familiar aspects of a brand in the website design, the effectiveness of online branding is increased. The Manchester United website does this effectively through the use of red and black as part of their website colors, the emblem display on top in a large red banner, notification of the fact that the team is the 2007/8 European and Premier League champions, and through a rotating slide show on the home page of highlighting the team’s successes.

The main menu is located on the left side of the Manchester United website pages. This is not only excellent for search engine optimisation, but also for user friendliness as most users will look at either the left side of the page or at the top when searching for the menu. The menu items display additional descriptions when the cursor hovers over a particular choice and reflects on the focus of SEO and user friendly website design.

The website analysis revealed the following excellent features that promote easy navigation, usability and accessibility which should be part of a well planned website design:

Keyword search facility is available on top for quick location of information.
Menu links are repeated in the form of image and text links with short introductions throughout the website.
The user doesn’t have to click through layers of pages to get to information.
Images and videos have been skilfully added to create interesting pages without overloading.
Web pages load fast.
The website opens correctly in a number of browsers.
The copyright notice, terms and conditions as well as contact option are available.
Standard web text has been used for easy reading.
There is enough contrast between background and text to ensure readability.
No dead links were found and all links lead to useful content.
Impeccable language usage.
Title tags have been used.
Images have either ALT tags or accompanied text descriptions and links.
Large chunks of text have been broken up to ensure shorter pages.
Choice of languages on top of the home page is present
FAQ section with comprehensive help.

Some improvements can be made to enhance navigation, SEO and user friendliness such as the provision of a home link on all pages. Although clicking on the logo will take the user back to the home page, a text link will also be helpful. The site map could not be located and would have been helpful for additional orientation as well as an SEO tool.

The Manchester United website also offers a fan section where loads of freebies, training videos and more are available and where interactivity is promoted through message boards and the opportunity to provide ideas about for instance, banners. Social networking has become the latest buzzwords for Internet marketing and the Manchester United website makes use of this method of viral marketing by offering the MySpace option to fans. Other features such as printable option, sending to a friend, making the website your home page or adding it to your favourite’s list which are available throughout reveal a website design geared towards optimal usage of effective Internet marketing techniques.

Online booking of tickets, getting the latest news on the team, and being able to enjoy excellent shopping are more interactivity and usability features which make the Manchester United website a must visit for fans.

From a website analysis perspective much has been done to ensure search engine optimisation and sound Internet marketing strategies. The results show great success in this area. The Manchester United website has been listed with DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory and has 3780 back links from Google and 217 000 back links from AltaVista at the time of website analysis (May 30, 2008). Incoming links are important for search engine ranking. More than 108 000 indexed pages were found at Google for the website and with a Google Page Rank of 7 in 2007 it is evident that the site is performing well. Fans of the team will no doubt find the site to be useful, entertaining and easy to navigate.