New design for sports game web site

CSFBL (http://www.csfbl.com)

CSFBL is a web-based multiplayer baseball game. We've bee in operation for over ten years and have thousands of participants. The game is essentially a baseball management simulation -- you take control of a team and play against other users.

The game/site has elements that are similar to fantasy sports (http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com), sports "news" web sites (http://www.mlb.com or http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb), and general baseball information sites (http://baseball-reference.com).

Our users are typically male, ages 20+, and somewhat tech-savvy. More often than not, they are avid gamers (video games/simulations/etc.). Most importantly, they are SPORTS fans. We are looking to redesign our site to make it more accessible to new fans (giving it a fresh look, not something from 2003), as we work on rebuilding it from the ground up.

Clean design that uses white space and shading effectively. We want minimalism but tasteful use of color. I prefer designs that use less colors and more shading. As an illustration, look at the following two pages, which show the same data:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/standings/?t…_standings
http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/standings

The ESPN and Yahoo versions are, in my opinion, superior. ESPN uses shading effectively; Yahoo has better use of white space and looks less "grid-like".

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Following along with the links above (of "Standings" pages from other commercial web sites), I am looking for a redesign of the CSFBL "Standings" page: http://www.csfbl.com/standings.asp?leagueid=7

Design should include header, navigation, body, and footer. The style and UI concepts would be repeated throughout the site.

Header could be similar to what we have now, in terms of logo and general color scheme (I like the blue). The login/membership controls in the corner can be altered as you choose.

Leave the FANTASYPLAYERS.com banner out of the mockup.

Navigation, currently links, should be tabs. Tab names are Home, Leagues, Teams, Players, and Forums. In the mockup, make the Leagues tab active.

Below the tabs are links relevant for the tab -- for an illustration, see Yahoo's site (linked above) and how the sublinks appear below the tabs in a horizontal bar.

Footer can have links and content as on the current CSFBL site, just style it up.

http://www.csfbl.com (our terrible home page)
http://www.csfbl.com/leagues.asp?leagueid=7 (the current 'league' page)
http://www.csfbl.com/team.asp?teamid=5 (a sample "team' page)
http://www.csfbl.com/schedule.asp?teamID=5 (a page with tabular data)
http://forums.csfbl.com (our unskinned community forums)

CSFBL presents a lot of data. I like our logo, and the header, though the colors could be tweaked. I would prefer our nav bar become tabs rather than links. Tables (which are heavily used) need effective color/style treatment, as they are among the parts of the site that get the most user interest. Better separation of headers and other elements are needed.

Of all the pages on teh site, one I like better is

As previously illustrated, I like:

http://espn.go.com/mlb
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb

I don't like very busy, "XBox"-like sites (such as http://www.mmorpg.com).

Attached is a mockup that a user did a while back, which hints at some new style elements, particularly related to the header tabs. It's a good point of reference.