Proud to Present: Alberta Pond Hockey

Introduction

Our team recently launched a new website for the Alberta Pond Hockey Association. The Alberta Pond Hockey Association is a non-profit organization that hosts the annual Alberta Pond Hockey tournament.

Opportunity

We were given the opportunity to rework the existing Alberta Pond Hockey website to give it an updated look. Primarily, our aim was to create a functional, easy-to-navigate and aesthetically pleasing website.

Some of the key areas of focus for this project included:

Update the website design to something more modern and attractive
Create an experiential website in line with DMO websites in look and feel
Facilitate team registrations and have a database storing information for easy access
Online payment functionality for team registrations allowing multiple forms of payment
Highlight other activities outside pond hockey as the main attraction

Approach

We had an image library as a starting point with over 600 high quality, unique images showcasing pond hockey from the 2018 tournament. We planned to use these highly engaging images to visually tell the story while the website reinforced the message with a more in-depth look into the most important aspects of the sport.

To kick things off, we created an information architecture to structure the pages and information in a way that would make sense to different types of visitors to the site. The available data and our research showed that there were three main groups interested in the Alberta Pond Hockey tournament:

Players participating in the tournament (Play)
People going to the tournament to watch (Watch)
Overnight visitors for the duration of the tournament (Stay)

We segmented the main pages and content from the old Alberta Pond Hockey website to fit these three main groups. By doing this, we could easily get the website audience to find information quickly based on the group they belonged to (play, stay, watch) and create category-funnelled landing pages which in the long run will be useful for advertising and promotions. Arranging the information in this manner also addressed the need for an experiential website. Once this process was completed, it formed part of the basis for the direction to take with a mock-up design for the new website which was the next step.

Our designer Jenna had this to say about what inspired the design for Alberta Pond Hockey; “I drew inspiration for the website’s redesign from the existing Alberta Pond Hockey logo. I thought it was important to consider the grungy and rugged aesthetic of the logo when planning every part of the new site, from the header to the font choices. The Strong Coffee team wanted to use a fresh new colour scheme as a way to revitalize and amp up the character of the website, and I think those colours really bring the site together. When I think of hockey, I think of how the ice looks with the bright, vibrant blue and strong reds of the lines seeping through. To express the look of a hockey rink, we used whites, greys, and blues. The scarlet red found in the logo is also used as the starting colour within the new triadic colour scheme you will continually see throughout the site.”

One of the primary functions of the Alberta Pond Hockey website is to provide a way to register a team for the tournament. We included “Register” in the navigation menu and also in the “Here To Play” section. We created a universal form that included all the different divisions which saved on time and budget compared to creating an individual form for each division. For payment processing, we integrated PayPal with Gravity Forms to allow teams to use multiple forms of payment using a reputable platform.