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Link Back -> Andrew Murray message board -> General tennis discussion -> WTA Ruin their website... again!
Post Info TOPIC: WTA Ruin their website... again!
AliBlahBlah


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WTA Ruin their website... again!
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For the second time in 5 years the WTA have overhauled their website.

And, again, they've ruined it.
Try finding the ranking points tables now. RSS feeds don't work. The player results pages now contain far less data (rank of player when playing tournament, points earned from tournament, etc.)

And so on.

Some little things look promising, like the stats for live score matches being available as a click through, and a new stats section that shows the top 20 on the WTA for serve and return metrics - but all just a static list, you can't genereate your own data.

But, here's an example of what they think is good use of space on a website, from their current homepage
GgcN0FB.jpg

I'm viewing on a large laptop screen, and the above is all I can see on the screen. (I have reduced the image size by half in both dimensions!)
Mobile formatting is not suitable for every device, and most web editors automatically reformat it for you these days, even the make-your-own type (e.g. SquareSpace).

But, here, the WTA think 20 words viewable on screen is the way to go.

One can only hope that over the coming weeks, the website at least recovers all of the functionality that it had previously, which is what happened last time; after about 6 weeks it was back to where it was. But, crucially, no better.

Time will tell, but you'd think they'd have learned.



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the addict


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If it ain't broke, the WTA can do it for you.

What a totally useless "revamp". So much information gone missing.

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Coup Droit


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Thanks for that.

I thought I'd go and blast them off a quick email - pressed on the 'contact' button at the bottom - and jsut get complete rubbish.

Guess they don't want to be contacted.....

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Spectator


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Yes, but realistically, the WTA generally seems more interested in promoting its players as celebrities than it is treating them as athletes and encouraging people to take the sport they play seriously.

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blob


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Well, WTA CEO Steve Simon has had a very busy week of telling everyone why they should shut up about Ms. Sharapova.
So, it's not fair to also expect him to have overseen or suitably delegated due dilligence of the relaunch of the website. Which, incidentally, was timed exactly to coincide with the day of... the return of Ms. Sharapova!

The redesign is really bad. So bad it even made me take a rare visit to TennisForum to see what they had to say over there, and for once there is a thread without internecine, faction based bickering, and all correspondents are in agreement: It's simply not fit for purpose.

The worrying thing is, with the way they've formatted some things, it's hard to see how they could possibly put many of the things they've removed back in, without another complete reformat.

Time will tell I suppose, but for, "the global leader in women's professional sport", this is laughably amateurish.

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Peter too


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The new WTA web pages
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What does everyone think about the new WTA web site? 

The photos make lists very long and I can't find any way of switching them off.

I can't find how to get Head to Head results which was one of the most useful features of the last system.



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AliBlahBlah


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There's a comment in the general section about this too.

It's awful is my quick capsule review. One only hopes that it is that way due to teething problems, rather than the current state of affairs being the finished product.

For the H2H, this does work. From the menu's at the top, pick 'Head to Head'
Scroll down until you see the two player names (you can't miss them, they're in 52 pt font!)
You can over-type these names, although it looks like you can't.
Type in the names for the H2H you want, select from the list that dynamically presents itself, and it updates automatically.
Scroll down to see th relevant bit... scroll... scroll... scroll...... yes! there it is! Scrolling is definitely a theme of the new website.
For older matches, the data seems to go missing.
I'd recommend usng the ITF H2H in the meantime, which works very well these days.

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AliBlahBlah


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Oh, and once you type in one name, you have to wait whilst it loads the H2H for that player against whoever was already in the box before you can enter the second player you actually wanted.

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indiana


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WTA Ruin their website... again!
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I've merged the two WTA website threads here.

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Peter too


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Every reincarnation of the WTA site seems worse than the last. It will shortly become a "once useful but never to be visited again" site. It's all about presentation but about as useful as a tennis ball made of butter.

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brendan


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I only used it for livescores and its icon was on my Google Chrome homepage so it was my go to for that - as they are now only showing results of womens matches I have to remember to go to ATP instead which still has the protennis scoreboard



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the addict


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I used the rankings FAQ for quick reference to the points available in each tournament, player profiles for their previous results, and the links to tournaments for the draws and order of play.

None of this information (apart from the player profiles, which are lacking info that was there before) is easy to find any more.

I just looked at the Stuttgart order of play, and it only shows completd and in-progress matches, not what is scheduled. No mention of Halep, who in court as I write this.

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indiana


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Scroll. scroll, scroll ....

I am sure they could manage to get less information re such as results and rankings on a page if they really tried  

I guess I will get used to it as one usually does with site revamps and most initial problems will be sorted out. But it does seem much more to be about projecting the players as individuals rather than seeking to provide statistical info in the most user friendly format, which will no doubt be rather annoying for many of us. But then the WTA is effectively the players' union.



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Sim


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Also lost the links from the ATP/WTA app to the draws. Takes you to a random live scores page.



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steven


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They really have outdone themselves with the latest downgrade, haven't they!

I wanted to check someone's ranking this morning since the ranking and +/- change shown elsewhere didn't make sense and when I got to www.wtatennis.com/rankings it would only show me the rankings and road no. 1s whichever options I clicked, while the calendar button for picking the ranking date didn't work at all.

I eventually got to the full rankings by another route, though they've removed the link to the pdf version, which is very annoying -
it's usually updated before the main page each week and is also by far the quickest source to search when estimating next week's rankings for lower-ranked players.

Searching for an individual player also takes longer than before unless it's one of the top players and even when the information you want is on a page, the amount of dead space they've created means you have to scroll much longer than before to find it, as Indiana says.

I agree with Spectator that "the WTA generally seems more interested in promoting its players as celebrities than it is treating them as athletes and encouraging people to take the sport they play seriously," which is very sad because it undermines the equality ethos that the WTA was set up with in the first place. It's also stupid because if people want to read about pointless celebrities, there are plenty of more suitable sites for them to go to.

Added to that, even if they do want to make it more of a celebrity-type site, there are ways of doing that without making it so much harder for those of us who do want to take the sport they play seriously to get hold of information.

The WTA are becoming a complete joke in far more ways than this and I'm surprised more of their players aren't making a fuss about it.

And OF COURSE they've changed all the URL formats again so most of the WTA links (player details, drawsheets) on the GB top 25 tables no longer work. Maybe they were using webs.com to host their site and it was unavoidable, but somehow I don't think so! I'm glad I put that "N.B. While current tables will always contain up to date links where possible, URL format changes on the WTA & ITF sites mean that WTA or ITF links on historical tables may start to fail at any time." on the tables after the last time it happened.



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GB top 25s (ranks, whereabouts) & stats - http://www.britishtennis.net/stats.html
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