A website for a sports school or club: what parents look for

A parent looking for a sports school for their kid wants to know three things: which group their child fits into, when practice is, and who's coaching. A good website answers all three on a phone, without anyone having to call. Then it puts the signup button right in front of them.

Groups, explained without jargon

Most parents don't know what "Beginners II" or "foundation training" means. Tell them in their own words: what age the group is for, what a child can do when they join and what they can do when they move up.

A structure that works:

• one card per group, with the age in large type;
• two or three lines about what they work on;
• the group's days and times;
• a "Sign up for this group" button.

At a swim school, for example, the programs can be split into levels, from getting comfortable in the water up to competitive swimming, and each level says what age it's for. Parents understand where their child stands without knowing swimming terms, and they don't have to call to find out.

A schedule that reads on a phone

The schedule is one of the pages parents come back to most. On a computer, a table with days as columns works fine. On a phone, a wide table gets cut off and people have to swipe sideways. The fix is a schedule that reads row by row: day, time, group, gym or pool.

If you build it as a table, make it a real table in the code, not an image. A table with a title (caption) and properly marked column headers (th with scope) is read correctly by the screen readers that people with low vision use. And like any text, you can update it in two minutes when a time changes, without redoing an image.

Next to the schedule, list the exceptions: school holidays, competitions, days the facility is closed.

Coaches, with names and photos

Parents hand their child to a person, not a business. Every coach needs a photo, a name and a few lines: which groups they coach, how long they've been coaching, what they did in the sport themselves. No stock photos: parents want to recognize the coach when they get to the gym or the pool.

Signup, one tap away

The signup button should be visible from every section, not just at the bottom. The form asks for little: the child's name, age, preferred group and a parent's phone number. Everything else (documents, a medical certificate, payment) can wait until after the first contact. Say clearly what happens next: "we'll call you within two business days to set up the first lesson" beats "your message has been sent."

If the first lessons are a free trial, say so next to the button. It's the reason a lot of parents decide to give it a try.

Photos of kids

Practice photos make the site feel alive, but children's data gets special protection under the GDPR. For online services offered directly to children, consent from a child under 16 has to be given or authorized by a parent. For photos on your website and social media, the safest route is written consent from the parent, collected at signup, which they can withdraw at any time. Where you don't have consent, choose shots taken from a distance, from behind or without faces.

What Google understands

Schema.org, the vocabulary search engines use, has a SportsClub type, a kind of SportsActivityLocation, which in turn is a LocalBusiness. With it you tell Google, in code, your name, address, phone number and hours (openingHoursSpecification). That data has to match what's on the page and on the club's Google profile.

You'll find what we do for schools and clubs on our services page. On accessibility in general, we wrote about contrast, alt text and keyboard navigation.