Today is the 1st birthday of your updated Steel City Striders website.
4 months of planning and building behind the scenes occurred before the new site went live on Saturday 7th June 2014.
Do you remember the old website? Lovingly maintained by Dave Beech for as long as anyone can remember. Plus, he did all this ON HIS OWN. Hell only knows how Dave managed it on his own, we struggle to keep up with a team now at the helm.
Dave Beech (left) presented with a thank you plaque by Club Chairman Andy Buck for his years of hard work on the website and Striders News.
Your new web team is just that, a team.
The following people take all the credit over the last 12 months;
- Simon Bayliss
- Dave Beech
- Nick Burns
- Sean Farrow
- Richard Hayes
- Sam Needham
- Jeni Pitkin
- Nick Portus
- Mick Wall
- Trevor Watson
- Louis Wood
They have all been involved and contributed towards the project at some stage through the last year, so hats off to them all.
Lets look at some key dates
- 7th June 2014: new website goes live
- 27th August 2014: Striders Archive Site goes live
- 29th November 2014: Join online and pay membership fees online goes live
- 14th December 2014: Buy Striders vests online
And some key numbers since go live last year
- All time page views: 170,556
- Average daily page views: 470
- Best ever daily views: 10,890 (Percy Pud race day)
- New members since “join online” went live: 106
- Number of results posts published: 382 (more than 1 a day!)
- Messages sent through Contact Form: 95 per month
- Archive Site page views: 330 per month
It is not just the website that your web team have been working on, other notable successes are
- Updated Road and Fell Championship scoring and spreadsheets
- Registered the club on external websites; Run England, BBC Get Inspired, This Girl Can, Move More Sheffield etc
- Mailchimp revamped email mailing list
- Committee shared document storage solution
- Online membership list for committee use
- Has grown our Twitter account to over 700 followers (https://twitter.com/SteelCtyStrider)
- New Facebook groups for different club sections; Beginners, Committee, Run Leaders, Web Team
In the last 15 months the web team have shaken up the whole of the club infrastructure and brought almost everything into the 21st century.
Credit must go to previous club chairman Matt Surgeon for pushing much of this through along with your committee and new chairman Andy Buck, who are all just as committed to moving the club forward.
We appreciate that it’s sometimes hard to accept change, especially when it’s just geeks with new ideas, but the committee have been brilliant as we’ve moved the club forward both outwardly facing and behind the scenes.
One final thought, all of the work within the club is offered totally for free. Everyone involved is a volunteer and provides their time for no reward.
Finance, membership, website, committee, training nights, race organisation, social events, introduction events etc etc are all provided purely on goodwill from everyone involved.
So if you have any skills that you think may be of use to the club and you’d like to help out, please get in touch.