Join the Team

I work for The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, an organization that has recently begun an effort to raise funds for seriously ill children through sports events at which athletes commit to raise a significant donation in return for receiving a runner number or spot in a race. Two of our most successful competitors are Team in Training (Leukemia-Lymphoma Society) at http://www.teamintraining.org/ and Team Fox (Michael J. Fox Foundation for parkinson's research) at http://teamfox.org/. Our current web home page is http://www.teamholeinthewall.org. We are overhauling the current site to achieve a look more in keeping with our new brand and marketing focus, which I have been privileged to help with. The new site should be viewable next month.

A glance at our two competitors' home pages reveals a number of unfortunate attributes: both have considerable text and visuals below the fold, use color in ways that is somewhat limited and use photos that are less inspiring than they might be.

Team in Training is immensely successful with raising funds for leukemia/lymphoma research. The color purple is an important part of their brand. Against the white background, it is appealing, but this morning, when I opened the site, it looked completely different. It was a dense purple throughout with reverse type. Not so easy to read.

The photos at the top take too long to load. Some of the photos in the header video are not as inspiring as the first one in the line-up. The challenge is finding images that work well in the small horizontal space at the top. A better solution might be to place a vertical photo at the top and one side -- especially if it allows the use of a more inspiring photo. A series of photos that change could work well here, if they didn't take quite so long to get started. The initial animation takes too long and doesn't really say anything.

The Team Fox home page contains a huge amount of verbal information that could be better shortened. Buttons with fly-outs could replace some of the text and less text could go below the fold. I like the white background of the site, but the blue is a lackluster shade. The header visual does not change and the photo that has been chosen has a fuzzy look to it and is not very appealing. A larger photo with a sharp image that shows runners having a good time would be a better choice.

Clearly, the sites of our competitors have some things to teach us as we forge ahead with our own redesign.