Athletics to Launch Re-Designed Site on Tuesday
November 05, 2012 | General
Nov. 5, 2012
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The University of Louisville Athletic Department will unveil a sleek, rebranded site on Tuesday that is highlighted by a plethora of new features.
With the new site design, comes a new domain name for the Cardinals' official web site. GoCards.com, incorporating the spirited cry of Cardinal fans, will replace the current UofLsports.com. Fans will still be able to reach the page by using UofLsports.com, but GoCards.com will be the new branded name for the site that launches Tuesday.
A variety of new changes will be noticed on the front page.
In the navigation area, the lighter colored drop-downs are expected to make it easier for fans to browse through links in the eight different menus. The navigation bar has turned into a sticky bar, meaning it will follow fans as they scroll down the pages and not forcing them to have to scroll back to the top of the page to reach a link in the drop-down menus.
In addition to daily headlines, the front page of the site will place additional focus on audio/video - produced by the athletic department - as well as on the Cardinals' social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter. The department is maintaining its emphasis on connecting with the fans, evident by the continuous growth of followers on Twitter and interaction on Facebook.
Below the main fold, users will be able to quickly access upcoming events in the calendar area. In the right column of the calendar tab, links will be displayed showing how fans can follow the action. There will be four additional tabs next to calendar: rankings, podcasts, photos, and blog. Of those features, the podcasts and blog are new elements, as the podcasts will provide fans with the ability to download press conferences, interviews and more to their mobile devices, while the blog will be all-inclusive updates from the Cardinals' 23 sports.
When clicking through to the sport pages, visitors immediately will notice more options toward the top of the page, such as tabs to video/audio, social media and coaches. Having the ability to boast some of the nation's most elite facilities across all sports, there's also a tab dedicated to showing where each respective sport trains and competes. On the right-hand side of the main window, fans can utilize the quick links area; while that was resident on the last site, lighter colors are being used for more readability.
There are six tabs fans will notice when scrolling down, like a more graphical-oriented calendar, results, photos from the respective sports' past events and a blog roll. Toward the right of that window will be each team's interactive/media guide. For example, if one clicks through to the men's basketball page, they can navigate to a link for the entire men's basketball media guide.
Louisville's official website, which attracts nearly one million views a month, is partnered with and operated by CBS Sports Interactive.
