Website Assessment Checklist for NZ Sports Clubs

Google your club's name. Go on - do it right now on your phone. What comes up?

If it's a Facebook page where the last post is from June, you already know the answer. If it's a SportsTG site that hasn't been touched since last season, or a WordPress page with a broken image slider and "Registrations Now Open for 2024!" still on the homepage, you know the answer to that too. But most clubs never look at their website through a stranger's eyes. They see it as someone who already knows the training schedule, already has the coach's number, already knows where the ground is.

A stranger doesn't know any of that. And a stranger is who your website is for.

Why this matters more than you think

Your website is not a communication tool for existing members. (They're in the WhatsApp group. They don't visit your site.) Your website is the front door for four groups of people who are making a judgement about your club based on what they find online.

Prospective members. A parent Googles "rugby club Christchurch" or "junior netball Hamilton" and lands on whatever comes up first. They'll spend ten seconds deciding whether this looks like a real, active organisation or something abandoned years ago. If your homepage answers "what sport, where, and how do I join?" - they'll click through. If it doesn't, they'll try the next club in the search results.

Sponsors. A local business considering a $2,000 sponsorship will check your website. If it looks professional and current, that signals you'll treat their investment seriously. If it looks like it was built in 2017, they'll wonder whether anyone will even see their logo.

Grant assessors. Sport New Zealand, regional sports trusts, community boards, Lottery Grants - they all look at your online presence when evaluating applications. A current website signals an organised club. A dead one signals risk.

Parents. Before signing up their eight-year-old, parents want to know the club is safe and run by adults who are paying attention. Your website is their first impression. An active, current site with safeguarding information visible tells a parent everything they need to know. A stale one raises questions.

And here's the bit that trips people up: a Facebook page is not a substitute. Facebook doesn't rank reliably in Google for location-based queries. You can't control the layout or what appears first. The algorithm decides who sees your posts - and it's not optimising for "parent looking for a hockey club." You need a web address you own and control.

The 20-point assessment checklist

Print this out. Bring it to your next committee meeting. Score each item as Yes, No, or Partially. Be honest - there's no audience here except your own committee.

Findability

1. Does your club appear on the first page of Google when you search "[your sport] club [your town]"? Try it. If your club doesn't appear, neither you nor Google knows you exist in any useful way. This is the single most important test on this list.

2. Is your website URL on printed materials, kit, signage, and social media profiles? Every piece of collateral should drive people to your website. If your banner at the ground says the club name but not the URL, you're missing the easiest conversion path you have.

3. Do you have a Google Business Profile with accurate address, phone number, and hours? Free. Takes fifteen minutes. It's what shows up in the map panel when someone searches for your club. If you haven't claimed yours, do it today at business.google.com.

First impressions

4. Does your homepage clearly state what sport you play and where you're located? Sounds obvious. But I've seen club homepages that assume the visitor already knows - a big photo of a pitch, a club crest, and no text explaining what this actually is. Name the sport. Name the town or area. First two lines.

5. Is there a clear "Join" or "Register" button visible without scrolling? Above the fold. Not buried in a menu. Not hidden on a subpage called "Membership Information." A button that says "Join" or "Register Now," visible the moment the page loads.

6. Is the content current? If the most recent news item is from last season, your website looks abandoned. This is the single fastest way to kill credibility with a stranger. If you can't keep content current, remove the news section entirely - a sparse site is better than a stale one.

7. Does it load in under three seconds on mobile? Go to PageSpeed Insights and type in your URL. Over 70% of your visitors are on their phone. If your site takes five seconds to load because of an uncompressed hero image from 2019, people leave before it finishes rendering.

Essential information

8. Are training times and locations easy to find? This is the number one thing a prospective member wants after they've confirmed what sport and where. If they have to click three pages deep or download a PDF to find training times, you've lost them.

9. Are contact details visible - phone number, email, or a contact form? At minimum, a contact form and a general club email. Ideally, a phone number for urgent enquiries. If the only contact method is a Facebook message, you're relying on someone checking Messenger - and that someone might be away for the weekend.

10. Is the current season's draw or schedule available? Not last season's. This season's. If your season hasn't started, say when it starts. A fixtures page showing Round 14 from last year tells the visitor nobody's maintaining this site.

11. Are fees and membership information published? People want to know what it costs before they get in touch. If your fees aren't on the website, you're forcing every prospective member to email or call just to find out the price. Some will. Most won't.

12. Are committee members or key contacts listed? A prospective member - or a sponsor, or a council officer - wants to know real people are running this club. A page listing the president, secretary, and treasurer (with role-specific contact details, not personal mobiles) signals legitimacy.

Functionality

13. Can someone register or join online? If joining requires downloading a PDF, printing it, filling it in by hand, and bringing it to training on a Thursday evening - you're losing members. Full stop. Online registration isn't a nice-to-have. It's the minimum expectation.

14. Can someone pay online? Same principle. If a parent has to organise a bank transfer and email the treasurer with a reference number, you're creating unnecessary friction. Card payment or direct debit should be part of the registration flow.

15. Is there an events calendar or upcoming events section? A simple list of what's coming up - registration days, season start, social events, working bees. Doesn't need to be fancy. Needs to exist and be current.

16. Is the site mobile-responsive? Open your website on your phone. Does it look right? Can you read the text without zooming? Can you tap the buttons without hitting the wrong one? If the answer is no, your website doesn't work for the majority of your visitors.

Maintenance

17. Who updates it - and is that person still on the committee? This is the question most clubs avoid. If the answer is "Davo built it four years ago and he's moved to Melbourne," you have a problem. Every club website needs a named, current committee member responsible for updates.

18. How often is it actually updated? Monthly is the minimum. If it hasn't been touched in three months, it's drifting toward irrelevance. Your CMS or hosting dashboard will tell you when a page was last modified.

19. Is the domain name owned by the club, or by a person who might leave? If the domain is registered in Davo-who-moved-to-Melbourne's personal account, the club doesn't own its own web address. Transfer it to a club account. Non-negotiable.

20. Is the hosting and CMS maintainable by a non-technical volunteer? This is the big one. WordPress requires regular updates - core software, plugins, themes, PHP versions. When those updates don't happen (and they don't, because the volunteer has a day job and two children), the site breaks or gets hacked. SportsTG and similar club platforms have their own limitations. The real question isn't "do we need a website?" It's "can a volunteer maintain this website without a web developer?"

The WordPress and SportsTG conversation

We need to talk about platforms because roughly half the club websites we see are built on WordPress, and many of the rest are on SportsTG, GameDay, or similar club platforms.

WordPress is genuinely good software. It powers about 40% of the internet. But it was designed for publishers and adapted for everything else through plugins. A typical club WordPress site has a theme, a page builder, a forms plugin, a payments plugin, a security plugin, and a caching plugin. Each one needs updating. Each one can conflict with the others. Each one is a point of failure that no volunteer should have to troubleshoot on a Wednesday evening.

SportsTG and similar platforms solve some of this - they're designed for sports clubs, they handle fixtures and results, and they're easier to maintain. But your website and your membership system are still separate. Someone fills out a form on the website, and then someone manually enters that information into whatever spreadsheet or system tracks members. That double-handling creates errors and eats volunteer time.

We're biased - we'll say that upfront - but TidyHQ's built-in website builder exists specifically because of this problem. When someone joins through your TidyHQ website, they're already in your membership database. Payment recorded. Contact details stored. No second system. No CSV export. No "can someone update the spreadsheet?"

The trade-off is real: WordPress gives you more design flexibility. TidyHQ gives you less design control but dramatically less maintenance - and the integration between your website and your member data is automatic. For most volunteer-run clubs, that trade-off lands clearly on the side of less maintenance.

Further reading

Geoff Wilson includes a website assessment framework in his book Leading a Grassroots Sports Club. We reviewed it in detail and built several of his frameworks into guides on our blog. Read our full review here.

For the Australian version of this checklist - with context specific to Australian sporting structures and .com.au domains - you'll find it here.

How TidyHQ helps

We built the TidyHQ website builder for the committee volunteer who's been told "we need a website" and does not have time to learn WordPress, manage hosting, or chase a developer every time the training schedule changes. The builder sits inside the same platform that manages your memberships, events, and contacts - so your website pulls directly from live data. Update training times in TidyHQ and they update on the website. A member registers through the site and they appear in your member list immediately.

It won't win design awards. It's not trying to. It's trying to give your club a professional, mobile-friendly web presence that a volunteer can maintain in twenty minutes a month - and that ticks most of the 20 points on the checklist above without requiring a separate plugin, a separate system, or a separate person to manage it.

Frequently asked questions

How much should a New Zealand sports club spend on a website?

You shouldn't need to spend more than $150–300 a year on domain registration and hosting for a standalone platform. If you're using TidyHQ, the website builder is included - the only additional cost is your domain name (around $20–40 per year for a .co.nz or .nz domain). Where clubs get into trouble is paying $3,000 for a custom WordPress build and then having nobody to maintain it after the developer moves on. The cheapest website is the one your current committee can actually keep updated.

Our Facebook page has more followers than our website gets visitors. Why bother with a website?

Because they serve different purposes. Your Facebook page talks to people who already know you. Your website talks to people who don't - the parent Googling "hockey club near me," the sponsor doing due diligence, the Sport NZ assessor checking your credibility. Facebook also controls who sees your posts through its algorithm. You post an announcement and maybe 15% of your followers see it. Your website shows the same information to 100% of visitors. Different tools, different jobs.

We scored badly on this checklist. Where do we start?

Start with items 1, 4, 5, and 6 - they affect whether a prospective member sticks around past the first ten seconds. Claim your Google Business Profile (item 3) while you're at it - it's free and takes fifteen minutes. Then tackle items 13 and 14 - online registration and payment. Those six items alone will change how many enquiries turn into actual members. The rest can follow over the next few committee meetings.

If you scored well on most of these points, your website is doing its job. If you didn't - and particularly if items 17 through 20 are the problem - it might be time to rethink the platform, not just the content. [See TidyHQ's website builder](/products/web-pages), or [start a free trial](/pricing) and build a test page before you commit.

References

• Sport New Zealand - Community sport and club development resources
• Regional Sports Trusts - Local club support, capability building, and digital presence guidance
• Charities Services - Governance and compliance guidance for New Zealand charitable organisations
• Seth Godin - First impressions, permission marketing, and digital presence philosophy
• Geoff Wilson - Digital communications guidance for grassroots sports clubs