Cricket Scotland website embraces the Facebook generation

Mike Stanger reflects on the learning curve of setting up and running Cricket Scotland's new website over the past 12 months...



A year ago, the final decision was taken by Cricket Scotland to undertake a complete revamp of the governing body's website, transferring it to a new ISP (Independent Service Provider), with a completely fresh design by Edinburgh-based Openside Sports Ltd. They were chosen on the evidence of their work for the West Indies Cricket Board, the Scottish Golf Union and various other sports bodies.

The previous provider was (is) based in Belfast and, although content was contributed regularly by a range of Scottish-based writers and photographers, Cricket Scotland wished to have total control over all aspects if its website - a natural progression as the governing body grew in size and complexity.

Of course, somebody has to be in charge of layout and editorial matters. Over the past 12 months, it has been an honour for that task to fall to me, particularly on the journalism side (and of course it became inevitable that I could not also continue producing the Scottish Cricketer e-magazine, although some people, amazingly, think it is still published!)

The website is run in partnership with David M Potter, whose hard-working input focuses on photography and, during the season, on maintaining results and scorecard information, particularly on a Saturday evening. In addition, Ken Nisbet and Neil Leitch look after the stats and archive pages, while Ben Fox and others on Cricket Scotland's staff also post news stories and information to specific areas of the website.

It is safe to say that much of the work on the website has to be done on a voluntary basis, otherwise the cost of maintaining it and updating it would be beyond any reasonable budget. For my part, I also contribute most of the video material to Cricket Scotland TV.

The previous website had seen page 'hits' numbers climb from 625,000 in 2004 to 2,677,000 in 2007, but some sort of plateau had clearly been reached in 2008 - though monthly figures had topped half a million for the first time in July of that year.

Since the new website started, page-hits have exceeded 3,360,000, and new monthly records were set in both July and August of 2009. In addition, Cricket Scotland TV has now registered a total of more than 51,000 viewings since February 1 last year.

And, towards the end of last season, an exclusive tie-up with Cricinfo enabled the two websites to share high-quality ball-by-ball coverage of the top Scottish games, which will continue from matches at the T20 World Cup qualifier in the UAE next month.

And yet, and yet.

The puzzling statistic is this: if there are, say, 6,000 regular adult cricketers playing in Scotland, at least that number of juniors, and let's say another 6,000 followers of the game in Scotland, the annual page-hits figures amount to just 187 per person, an average of one page-hit every other day. This doesn't seem so impressive, and there must be scope for further improvement.

And, though CSTV is clearly a welcome addition to the features available on the website, the copious viewing statistics available from YouTube tell an equally odd story. There are now just under 100 separate videos available to view on demand, and it doesn't take a brilliant mathematician to calculate that each therefore gets an average figure of just 500 viewings.

The viewing figures also reveal that a significant number of viewers are, in fact, resident overseas - and one may surmise that many of those who have watched CSTV will make a point of watching each new one as it becomes available. So, a good guess is that fewer than 400 Scots watch Cricket Scotland TV programmes on a regular basis.

The most popular individual video has been the BBC highlights of last August's Scotland v Australia ODI in Edinburgh, which has attracted nearly 3,500 viewings (half of which, strangely, were registered over a three-day period in late October!). The next most popular programme was the highlights of the Scotland v Afghanistan final at the World Cup qualifying tournament in South Africa in April - that has attracted over 2,500 viewings, and the indications are that maybe 2,000 of those were by Afghani fans in various countries!

No other videos have yet reached the 2,000 viewings mark, though another five have topped the 1,000 figure. There have been more than 1,000 viewings in a single day on three occasions. Mostly, the daily figure rumbles on at around 100-150.

I'm happy to admit that what I've produced doesn't compare in popularity with the likes of SuBo but, given that YouTube restrict videos on their channels to no more than 10 minutes, it can hardly be a burden of time that prevents more Scottish fans of the game from having a look to see what the latest CSTV offering is all about.

Cynics will say that this proves the material is generally of inferior quality, and maybe it is, though no fewer than 26 of the videos have been given five-star ratings by viewers. But CSTV remains the only place to go if you want to see for yourself what's gone on in the world of Scottish cricket.

Nevertheless, for these and other reasons, Cricket Scotland has now created its own Facebook page, accessible here, operated by the youngest occupants of the MES Towers headquarters: they assure me that this is the modern method of communication, better than e-mail, that will reach out to the younger generation of Scottish cricketers. We shall soon see if website visits, page-hits and CSTV viewing statistics balloon some more, as the number of Cricket Scotland's young Facebook 'friends' mounts up (it's already approaching 200).

Curiously, I read a newspaper report recently that MyGaelic.com - described as a Gaelic-language version of Facebook, funded by a government grant of £250,000 - had attracted just 1,574 'friends' to register with them since February 2008, and had posted 12 videos [CSTV=97 videos in 12 months], with a total of just 1,500 viewings [CSTV=51,000+]. If anyone knows how to get such a government grant, please let me know!

As it happens, one year on from the start of the new Cricket Scotland website, there is a fresh opportunity to test out to what extent people have now become appreciative of what it offers. I will be going to Dubai for the T20 World Cup qualifier. Somehow, I intend not only to complement cricinfo's scorecard service from a Scottish point of view, but also to video the matches, producing a 60-second CSTV report with action clips within half an hour of the end of each game, a full textual account of the game soon after, and a 10-minute video highlights programme later the same day. I will certainly sleep well each night!

Meanwhile, if anyone has any constructive comments or suggestions to make on the above thoughts, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at mike.stanger@btinternet.com - or just post your comments on Facebook, and someone will pass them on!