What makes a good website? Well, there are so many answers and those answers vary from person to person. Depending on the goal of the website, there are different things you might want to try to include on it. But for the most part, there are a handful of techniques that should definitely be used to make your website as user-friendly as possible. And Steve Krug talks about these in his book ‘Don’t Make Me Think.’

One of the things I think is most important to keep in mind when creating a website is that most people don’t actually read every word on every page – instead, they scan. People look for key words or interesting facts. They don’t have the time or patience to get bogged down on every little thing. When Krug brought up this idea about catering your website for scanners, I immediately could relate. I know whenever I’m reading something, I don’t really care about all the details. I just want to find the specific information I’m looking for. The idea of not having to think as a user, which is Krug’s main point throughout the book, is the ideal situation.

Something that goes hand-in-hand with making the site scanner-friendly is designing it in a way that’s appealing to those same people. I think the six steps Krug suggests to take to ensure your website is designed right are incredibly helpful and will help attract users, including those who aren’t wanting to read the entire thing:

1. Take advantage of conventions – It’s called conventional for a reason. People are used to conventional. They already know how it works. There’s no need to take the time to learn something new. Putting these conventions into your website makes it easy for readers (or scanners) to quickly find what they’re looking for.
2. Create effective visual hierarchies – The more important something is, the more prominent it should be, and group related things together. If something is important, make it stand out. Don’t let it get lost within everything else that’s on your site. I think it’s so important to make it obvious and tell users “Pay attention, this is important.” Odds are, they’ll probably appreciate it, too.
3. Break pages up into clearly defined areas – This allows users to immediately determine what they’re able to ignore and lets them focus on just the parts that are likely to be useful. Nobody wants to waste their time searching through pages of unwanted and useless information.
4. Make it obvious what’s clickable – I found it interesting that what a lot of people are doing when they’re online is looking for the next thing to click. Because this is the case, having clickable links and making them stand out is going to automatically help users navigate your site easier.
5. Keep the noise down to a dull roar – Visual noise was a new concept to me, but it definitely makes sense. People don’t want distractions or to be overwhelmed. That is only going to scare them away.
6. Format text to support scanning – Keep everything looking clean and make it easy for users to find information, or at least know where to go to look for it. Headings, short paragraphs, bullets, and highlights can be the deciding factor in whether someone decides to look through your site or not. Speaking from personal experience, if I go to a website and see long paragraphs filled with text that’s all the same color, size , and in the same format, I don’t even stay on the page for more than five seconds. I want something easy to read and something that doesn’t force me to read the entire page.  

I believe implementing these steps when making your website will go a long way, and thanks to Krug, I can now use these tips for myself when it comes to designing my own site. And I think the results are definitely going to show it’s worth it to follow his advice.

Today’s tasks started with a fun one — editing together the open and close to our radio broadcasts for Spring Training games (which are called billboards.) Now, editing might not be the definition of fun for everyone, but I enjoy it!

To do this, I used Adobe Audition to combine the voice over introducing and closing out our broadcasts, a music track, and several highlights from games from last season.

First thing I had to do was decide which highlights I wanted to use for this. A couple of them I already knew off the top of my head because they were amazing plays that I still remember happening from when I first watched them. Honestly, probably the toughest part was narrowing it down and deciding which ones to include because there were so many good options. It was also pretty fun getting to go back through last year’s games and listen to all the highs from the season. It was like getting to relive the wins all over again.

Once I chose all the highlights, I then pieced them together with the voice over, intertwining the two together. The open and close both alternate back and forth between the voice over and highlights. And the entire time there’s music playing underneath it in the background. (And I feel like I’d be doing everyone a disservice if I didn’t mention the song that I used — Instant Replay by Dan Hartman. I don’t know why I’ve been deprived of this song my entire 21 years of existence — not even joking haha. It came out in 1978 and you can definitely tell that when you hear it, but I promise it’s still an absolute jam. Please go listen to it.)

Anyway, once everything was all laid out in the right spots, I then had to make sure the audio levels all sounded good. So I went through and fixed that up a little bit, primarily raising the levels of the radio calls that were in the highlights.

After that was all finished, I was done with editing it all together. It was definitely fun to have the chance to be creative and play around in Audition to create my own billboards that will be used during our game broadcasts!

There’s less than TWO weeks until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, and today (“truck day”) was an official kickoff. It’s the day equipment is loaded and delivered to the Rays pre-season home in Port Charlotte.

The Rays clubhouse staff packed a 26-foot truck full of equipment the team will be using during Spring Training. The items ranged from a couple dozen bats to a couple hundred pants and everything in between. But moving all this stuff just a couple hours down the road is no easy task (seriously there was so much equipment). With more and more things to load up into the trucks every year, it makes not forgetting any of it a HUGE challenge.

Some of the stuff was not what I was expecting, though. One of the odder things that’s apparently making the trip down to Port Charlotte is Seattle Seahawks gear that belongs to one of the players — either Blake Snell or Andrew Kittredge, according to the clubhouse manager.

With SO MUCH STUFF needing to make its way down south, one trip with one truck isn’t enough to transport all of it. Another truck full of whatever equipment that was left over after today will be going back down on Tuesday. But I have to say…undoubtedly the best part about today? The season is FINALLY here!

The other day I had a pretty great day at work that I definitely won’t ever forget. The Rays held voluntary workouts for their players, which were open to the media. And now that I’m in the position I am, I had the opportunity to attend these and get to witness the players up close for the first time.

I do have some prior experience covering baseball teams since I did so for the UF team this past season, so I kind of knew the drill and how the media availability was going to work. But obviously I knew this was going to be a little different since it’s the major leagues and there were a few more media personnel in attendance than was normally there at the college level. Plus, IT’S THE MAJOR LEAGUES, so there’s automatically an added significance to everything that goes on.

After waiting on the field for a little while, eight players eventually made their way out of the dugout to get their workouts started. They stretched for some time, threw with each other in order to warm up, and then since most of them were pitchers, they threw bullpens in preparation for Spring Training.

Once they finished up doing their thing, a handful of the guys stopped to talk to us in the media. And I got to be a part of two different interviews. It was a super cool experience that I’m looking forward to getting to do a lot more of as the season continues!

Once we were all done collecting the interviews, I then got to write a blog about what we learned from those conversations…and it was my first one of those for the organization, too. So, it’s safe to say I thoroughly enjoyed work that day, and it only made me more excited for what’s to come in the future!

And just to add as a side note, one of my coworkers brought their dog into the office, and it was the cutest thing ever, so getting to play with the dog for a while definitely didn’t hurt!

A few months back, I found out I was going to get to work for the Tampa Bay Rays as a broadcasting intern. I was actually going to be working for an MLB team…something I’ve always dreamed of doing. For a while it was just something I had to look forward to, but now for the past three weeks, it has been my life.

Going into this, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, and of course, was nervous to step out of my comfort zone I had at UF for almost the past three years. But I’m so happy that things have gone the way they have because I’ve enjoyed work so much that it doesn’t even feel like work. I’m learning so much and getting to work with the radio broadcasting team for the Rays, which is such a great opportunity and fun experience. And on top of that, everyone I work with has been extremely nice and welcoming…and I know the job is only going to continue to get better!

While everything is going well so far, I’m also so excited for what’s to come later in the baseball season. Having the chance to go to major league baseball games and getting to call that work doesn’t sound too bad to me. I honestly just feel so lucky that this is my life and this (Tropicana Field) is where I get to go to work every day!

Welcome to my blog all about what my life is like working at Tropicana Field for a major league baseball team. Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton