There are many reasons why your sports club should consider having a website. For most clubs attracting new members is key to maintaining and improving the standard of their teams. Having a website in itself won’t necessarily help you in bringing players to your club. Having a good website which showcases your club effectively may just give you the edge over your local rivals. Sports players, be it in Football, Rugby, Hockey, Cricket or another sport, when they move to a new area often search online to find a local club. You should consider that you not only have a website, but have a website that shows what a great club your’s is to be part of, and a website that potential members can find when they search online. If you want your club to thrive advertising it effectively on the internet is something you shouldn’t over look.

Many people seem to think it is enough to just have a website, and leave it to sit there. Clubs often put a website online, and then it just seems to be forgotten, someone is always going to update it but never quite does, but there is so much more that can be done. The web provides a way for sports club to centralise many of their administration functions. There is always a lot of effort wasted by a few people within a sports club, just keeping the club running on a day to day basis. In business the tasks that are repeated again and again are automated using Information Technology and processes. Why should your sports club be any different? We don’t believe it should and our websites help you to run your club more efficiently.

Hitssports was established by a sports fanatic, and experienced programmer, with the purpose of helping sports clubs make the most of the web. Our system is highly affordable, currently just £75 per year for a fully hosted solution, with a 30 day free trial available for you to fully test the features. That’s £75 per year for a website, that genuinely helps you run your club, gives you a website that showcases your club (including forums, photo galleries, results, match stats, player profiles with performance summaries, member emailer and so many more great features)If your club wants to move forward then having a website that not only advertises your club but assists you in the day to day running of your club will make a difference.

You can use your website to publish news, and results so that members know what is happening in your club, but to really keep in touch you may need to pro-actively contact members rather than just relying on the website.  This is where our emailer tool comes in.

One of the features of a hitssports websites is a tool to allow you to email your members.  Keeping in touch with your membership is important so we’ve tried to build in features that allow you to contact the members you need to, how you need to.

The emailer tool, is found under the communications heading in the admin area.  It allows you to compose an html formatted email, which means you can add colours, fonts, and layout to your email.  You can also personalise the email each person receives by addressing the email personally, in a similar way to how you would use a “mail merge” in an office application.

You can then select who receives the email.  The choices are as follows.

• All current members - email goes to all members registered on the system.
• All club officials - Email will be sent to all those people marked as club officials
• Members selected for a specific fixture - if the details about a fixture have changed you might want to select to email all those who have been selected to play.
• Squad / or specific members - This option allows you to send an email to members in a specific squad (or squads), you can also choose specific members who you would like to send the email.

These features cover most of the common ways that sports club need to communicate with their membership.  One additional feature to launch shortly will allow you to send an email to all members who are not currently selected for a fixture on a given date, but have marked themselves as available.  This is intended to aid in the scenario when players drop out of teams at short notice and replacements are required, rather than frantically phoning round possible replacements this will automatically contact all possible replacements.

We are also working on an SMS text messaging feature, which will provide all the same features as the emailer, however rather than sending emails it will send text messages to members who have registered their mobile phone.

Our simple web based interface, enables you to select your teams online.  The whole selection process from managing who is available, through team selection, notifying selected members and confirmations to team captains is all handled centrally through the website.

Simply login to your websites administration area, then find the fixture you want to select your team for. Then just select the players from the dropdown lists. If you haven’t chosen any of your players yet, don’t worry, simply choose the “select other” option.

When you hit save, an email will automatically be sent to all the players selected, and another email sent to the team captain (or other email specified) to give a summary of all the email messages sent out. This allows for any players who still don’t use email. The email sent to each player includes a unique link to allow them to specify their availability, when they click this link a notification is sent to the team captain (or email address specified), to let them know about their availability.

It’s really simple, no more ringing around all your players, everything managed for you through your own website. The process also displays the teamsheet on your website, and means you all ready to post details of the result after the match has been played.

Hitssports.com helps you keep the running of your sports club simple, saving you time and money.

We have now launched our service to Football, Rugby and Hockey clubs.  Most of the features remain exactly the same across all sports, the results section and stats are obviously different for each of the different sports.

The updates allow the entry of results data, specific to each sport.  For football, this allows the entry of goals scored, and information on any cards received.  The rugby version allows the entry of all points scores, broken down by tries, conversions, penalties and drop goals, and again information on any cards received.  The hockey version allows goals scored, and a log of any green, yellow or red cards received.  All results data is specific to each player who competed in a match.

On the front end of each website the member profile is amended to show summary performance statistics by season, and the results pages have been amended accordingly.  Further statistics will be available on the front end of the website through a “stats” page shortly.  These will include top goal / points scorers and other information.

Hitssports provides websites for sports clubs. But not just any
websites, websites that really make running your club easier, saving
you time and money, helping you to attract new members, and keep your existing members happy.

We will use this blog to post details of new features, and to post useful information on how to use the system.