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Net Gains (Jul 03, 96)
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Against a grassy green background, this site loads into your browser after a couple of tries at getting to Wimbledon. A prominent placement of the IBM logo (with a link to their own site ) serves as a subtle reminder that IBM is the "Technology Sponsor of The Championships, Wimbledon '96". They claim to have reached 4 million 'hits' (number of times people have visited the site) during the previous year. This IBM - run Internet home page - operated on behalf of The All England Tennis Club - is expected to attract even more tennis fans this year to experience The Championships live !
The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club Wimbledon, in cooperation with IBM Corporation, has established this World Wide Web server with the objective of distributing live, instantaneous results and expanded coverage of the 1996 Wimbledon Championships. The Web site will allow tennis fans from all over the world to share in the excitement and experience of players and spectators at Wimbledon. Now, being Technology Sponsor, IBM gives the equipment and services for collection of results, information, and statistics, and supplying the above to the media. As an extension of this kind of an information processing system, IBM has installed the hardware and software necessary to make all this information accessible to the world via the Information Superhighway - by putting it onto the Net.
The thing that next attracts attention after the IBM logo is the weather information which shows the sun playing hide - and - seek with the clouds on that image. There is a picture of a refree adjusting the net in the center of the home page. To the left of the refree, there are links to different Wimbledon related pages like information about the championships, what's on that day at Wimbledon, the competitors, and the history of the championships. But, surprisingly enough, most of these are barely complete pages with hardly any stuff on them. But on visiting the Championship History page, it's time to go : "Halleujah !" , because this page actually has a lot of stuff dating back from 1877, complete with ancient black & white snapshots down the ages.
To the right of the refree, there are links to Radio Wimbledon (be warned - even two days into the championships, it was bare except for a "Stay Tuned for Radio Wimbledon" sign ). Other links here include Wimbledon News which has daily previews, news, and features. Among other things lined up are interviews with the players. The Wimbledon Live section is specially designed to keep the surfer up to date with the latest scores from the matches of the day - giving them a choice of choosing the match they are interested in, and serving up the information as requested.
Finally, there's the Wimbeldon Guest Book that a lot of people are clamouring to sign. You type in your name e - mail address, and any comments you have to help improve the site. Talking about improvements, two main shortcomings of this site come to mind. Firstly, there's the lack of substantial information on many pages, and the number of blank, incomplete pages lying about the place. It would help to keep in mind that quantity doesn't matter as much as quality does. Secondly, navigating this site is not all that easy and straightforward, if one wants to get an overview of everything available. Take the Official Wimbledon Merchandise for instance. There's no simple way to get to the order form from the home page itself. But if you manage to get to that page after a lot of searching, there are items galore for the buying - right from towels to t-shirts, and baseball caps. With price tags ranging from 20 to 52 pounds, they all have the Wimbledon logo emblazoned in varying sizes and forms.
One would have expected a professionally designed site like this one to be better designed, but what's the point in raising a racket over a few racquet games ??