Digital fan engagement top of the charts
The recent Huddersfield Town Fans Survey has highlighted the importance of what the Club’s does online when it comes to fan engagement in 2013.
833 fans completed the Club’s largest ever survey at htafcsurvey.co.uk in late 2012 and 90% said that they got the latest news about Huddersfield Town from the Club’s official website, www.htafc.com.
59% also use the Club’s official twitter account, @htafcdotcom, which has just broken the 16,000 followers mark this week.
Emails from the Club ranked as the fourth most important source of information about Huddersfield Town, with 53% of respondents registering their details at www.huddersfieldportal.com in order to receive correspondence from the Terriers.
That ranked just below the more traditional medium of printed local newspapers, which were ranked as the third most importance source of Town info with 56%.
The Club’s commitment to fans forums, such as the regular meetings with Club Directors and the regular pre-match question and answer sessions at Canalside, with 42% of fans attending to learn the latest news about Huddersfield Town.
Huddersfield Town’s Communications Manager Dave Sykes commented on the latest findings:
“The importance of digital sources of information is increasing in every walk of life and it is no surprise to see our online channels coming top of the recent fans’ survey.
“On top of the website, the past two years have seen the emergence of new social media channels such as Twitter and the Club tries to embrace every form of communication whenever possible and viable.
“However, our role is to ensure that as many people as possible know about the events, community work and things that Huddersfield Town is engaging in and we use as many channels as possible, from digital methods to the more traditional forms of media such as written publications and radio. Both our Chief Executive Nigel Clibbens (@nclibbens) and Commercial Director Sean Jarvis (@seanmjarvis) are active on Twitter.”
It wasn’t all good news for Town though; the survey showed that 50% of 833 fans thought the new official club website, provided by the Football League’s interactive department and new provider Sapient Nitro, was poor or very poor – with only 32% ranking it as good or very good.
“We’re well aware of the issues surrounding the League’s summer re-launch of the official club websites, but I believe that if we held the survey again today the rating of the official site would be slightly improved – thanks largely to the latter launch of the tailored mobile site.
“However, we know there is still a lot of work to be done on the website to get it to where we want to be. The Club is committed to working with the Football League to improve the usability of the website for our supporters.
“There are constant week on week improvements being made to the site that might not be noticeable to fans using the site, but they are gradually accumulating to make a real difference to the site.”
In February 2012 the Club entered into a partnership with Huddersfield-based Ask Insight (click HERE for news on this partnership) who became Town’s Official Research Partner, and the pair joined forces to conduct this comprehensive survey of Town fans regarding all aspects of the Club (click HERE for full details of the survey).
To read the findings on the match day experience of home fans, click HERE.
Further results from the Fans Survey will be revealed on htafc.com next week.
For more information on Ask Insight, please visit www.askinsight.co.uk
