The Key to Engaging Fans

Bluhalo's Founder and Managing Director, Spencer Gallagher, appeared at Ad:Tech today to share his in depth knowledge of engaging fans digitally.

Through many years' experience working for some of the top sporting brands in the UK that include Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool F.C., NFL UK and Subaru World Rally Team, Spencer and the Bluhalo team have developed an impressive ability to create highly successful web projects. Projects that not only deliver return on investment, but that also are a success with the fans - often the most difficult part of a sports web project.

With sports fans showing a devotion earned by no other types of brands, the approach to change within their team's website has to be a careful one. This approach has been finetuned by Spencer and the Bluhalo team, with Andy Murray's loyal fans truly embracing his new website, launched earlier this year by Bluhalo.

Spencer shares his knowledge of engaging fans in the social media and targeting theatre at Ad:Tech.

Sports Website Design

It's all about engaging fans.

We know sport, we’re fans ourselves. We know how fans think, what they want, why and how; and when we’re not a fan, we become one. We get inside the minds of fans and we work out exactly what makes them tick.

We don’t just design a website to how we think it should look, and we don’t just design a website that follows the crowd, we design a website that sets you apart from the crowd, encapsulates the essence of your brand and most importantly, excites your fans.

Exciting your fans isn’t just about giving them a website that has that ‘wow’ factor, although that’s important too, of course. It’s also about giving them the basics that they are going to need, such as real-time results, updates and news. The ‘wow’ factor obviously helps and gives them something to talk about too. But there also needs to be more depth, things to keep them coming back, we don’t only give you a way to talk to your fans, we give you a way to interact with your fans.

Fan interaction is great. They love you, they want to be associated with you and they really want to be listened to by you. By creating ways for the fans to interact, not only do we get you even more fan-love, but we also get you a great resource for research, feedback and the halo effect – they’ll spread the love. We give them a place to belong, a place of passion and community.

But it’s not all about cool features, communities and the latest downloads. There’s also a bit of theory behind the way we do a great job at engaging the fans via your website. We focus on user experience - a clear layout, intuitive navigation and compelling calls to action; we ensure you are accessible – after all, up to one in five visitors to your site will have some form of disability; we keep it simple – the less clicks to where they want to go the better; the list of what we do is pretty long, but the long and the short of it is – we help our clients engage their fans and we do a good job of it too. Which is why we are the agency of choice for the UK sporting sector.

You can check out some of the sports websites we've created by visiting our clients page.