Harrogate Town AFC is looking to change the way the club’s seen in the community this season.
With new owners in place and a positive outlook and backing for the club going into the 2011-12 season, the new board are making steady steps towards growing the business off the pitch, leaving manager, Simon Weaver, to focus on driving results on the pitch.
Simon Weaver, Manager, Harrogate Town AFC said:
We have a tough season ahead of us, but we also have some fantastic and unbelievably loyal fans who continue to support the club through thick and thin and who have helped the club to survive – these fans are the reason the club exists and the ones we want to thank, but everyone at the club would like to see this support base grow and are committed to making the club a central and integral part of the local community. The new website is just the start of things to come, but hopefully it shows that the board are committed to investing in the future of Harrogate Town AFC.
In order to increase its fanbase, Town needs to connect with and attract more of the younger members of the community, making digital communications a key target if they are to achieve this. Despite only being a relatively small club, it has had its own website for a number of years now which has been consistently well maintained, keeping fans up to date with all the latest fixtures, results, news and stats. The time has come though, for the club to invest in a more comprehensive and visually appealing website which it hopes its supporters will make even greater use of and interact with, to make it a key part of the club moving forward.
The newly launched website also has a new home now, moving to www.harrogatetownafc.com from its former site, www.harrogatetown.com (although this will redirect to the new address). It’s been designed with the fans’ perspective in mind at every stage, as the site’s webmaster, Peter Arnett, is a big Town fan – and also the club’s Press Officer, Programme Editor and Official Photographer!
The new site has been created in partnership with sports consultancy, Oaks, who have been working with Town to help develop and grow the commercial and community side of the club and Leeds based web designers, Turn Key.
This semi-professional club is extremely proud of everything it stands for – its history, its fans and its teams and the launch of the new website is hopefully just the start of a bigger and brighter future for Harrogate Town AFC.
Irving Weaver, Director, Harrogate Town AFC added:
Harrogate Town AFC is a fantastic club and one I’m hugely proud to be associated with. I believe there’s massive potential to develop and grow a strong side with an even stronger community ethos, but we need the people of Harrogate to get behind us. We realise though that for this to happen, we need to improve the way we communicate with them and hopefully this new website will help put us on the right path.
