Case study

About twenty times the visits. Now rebuilt in code.

Social Football Australia runs weeknight nine-a-side games across Melbourne: no teams, no season, no committee, so the website does the job all of that used to do. My redesign and SEO took it from about 50 visits a week to about 1,000, in the club's own figures. On 23 October 2026 it went live again, rebuilt from the ground up on Astro, and in November 2026 the club's own booking system and dashboard went live on it.

Book a free call Visit socialfootballaustralia.com (opens in a new tab)

The rebuilt Social Football Australia home page: No team? No problem. Just play.

Client: Social Football Australia, Melbourne
Sector: Sport and community
What I did: Website redesign and SEO, a rebuild in code, then the club's booking system and staff dashboard
Format: Weeknight nine-a-side
Platform: Built in code

About 20x

Weekly website visits, from around 50 to around 1,000

Reported by the client, measured from mid-March

Worth stating plainly, because the client did: Social Football Australia also run Meta ads, and they say most of their bookings come from those. The traffic growth is what they put down to the SEO work, so that is the only thing claimed here.

What the redesign did was make the site findable, and something an ad click could land on without losing the player. How the first redesign did it

The rebuild · Live 23 October 2026

Why I rebuilt the whole site in code

The redesign proved the format works online. The next step was a site built for where the club is going: a booking system of its own, run from its own dashboard. So I rebuilt Social Football Australia from the ground up on Astro, served from Cloudflare's network, and it went live on 23 October 2026.

It is fast. On launch day Google's PageSpeed test gave the home page a perfect 100 in all four scores on desktop, and on mobile 100 for accessibility, best practices and SEO, with 95 for performance.

Nothing changed for players on launch day: every Book button went to the booking system the club already used. Phase 2 brought the booking onto the club's own site in November 2026.

100

Accessibility

100

SEO

100

Best practices

100

Performance

Google PageSpeed Insights, home page on desktop, 23 October 2026. Lab scores move by a few points from run to run.

The rebuilt Venues page, with a card for each state — Venues, by state, each one a way into the grounds near you.

The Cheltenham venue page, with game night, kick-off, format and length of game at the top — A page for every ground: the night, the kick-off and the format before you scroll.

The Packages page with the 8 Game Pack at $120 — The 8 Game Pack, priced per game, usable at any Melbourne venue.

The Franchise page, inviting operators to bring social football to their area — Its own route for operators who want to run the format somewhere new.

What the new site does

Built around one thing: getting players onto the pitch

The website

Live now

A page for every ground

Every venue has its own page, grouped by state, so a player in Cheltenham or Elwood lands on their pitch, and each area has a page of its own to rank on.

The answers before they ask

Each venue page leads with the 9-hour rule, then days and times, footwear, surface, parking and changing rooms, with a Directions button and a number to call or text.

Book a game from anywhere

Book a Game sits in the header of every page and on every venue, and books and takes payment on the club's own site.

The 8 Game Pack, front and centre

Packages sets out the 8 Game Pack at $120, just $15 a game, usable at any of the club's Melbourne venues.

A route for every audience

Junior football and franchising each have their own page, so parents and would-be operators are not sent through the adult players' pages.

Built for Google and for phones

Page titles, a sitemap and structured data for search engines, and on launch day 100 for accessibility and SEO in Google's mobile PageSpeed test.

The booking system and dashboard

Phase 2 · Live

Live since November 2026: booking and payment on the club's own site, the dashboard the whole club runs from, and a home screen app for players.

Booking and payment on the site

Five steps from venue to confirmed, paid by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through Stripe, with the 8 Game Pack and promo codes built in.

Every game night in one place

A schedule with a drawer for each game: the roster, moves between games, cancellations, refunds of any amount, and downloads for Excel.

No overbooking, ever

The last spot goes to one person even when several book at once, a spot is held for 15 minutes while someone pays, and a payment that lands after a game fills is refunded automatically.

Waitlists that fill themselves

When a spot opens, everyone waiting hears at once and the first to book gets it. Reminders go the day before and two hours before kick-off, by app notification, text or email.

Franchises run as their own business

Each franchise gets its own venues, staff, contact details and monthly statement, with card payments at its venues going straight into its own Stripe account once the club approves it.

Cancel a game in one go

Staff cancel a game and every player gets their money or pack credit back automatically, with an email, a text and an app notification.

See the new site live (opens in a new tab)

The brief · Where it started

No club, no season, no committee

Most amateur football sits behind a season. You join a team, you commit to a fixture list, somebody keeps a spreadsheet. Social Football Australia removed all of it. You pick a venue, pick a night, book a game and turn up.

They came to me for a redesign of a site that was not doing that job, and for the search work to go with it.

That model puts an unusual weight on the website

There is no club secretary to ring and nobody to ask whether there is a space on Tuesday. If the site cannot answer that in a few seconds on a phone, the player does something else with their evening.

Early 2026

The first redesign

Before the rebuild came a redesign of the club's previous site, and the visits that followed it. One question drove the layout throughout: how few taps between arriving and being booked into a game. The screens below are that earlier site, not the one live now.

Venues, organised the way players think
Grounds grouped by state and then by location, so somebody in Cheltenham or Elwood or Frankston finds their pitch rather than reading a national list. That structure is also what gives search engines something to rank for each area rather than one page trying to cover everywhere.
One action, repeated
Book a game is the primary call to action in the header, the hero, the venue pages and the closing section. Everything else on the site is subordinate to it.
Separate routes for separate audiences
Parents looking at junior football and operators enquiring about a franchise want completely different things from adult players. Each gets its own page and its own enquiry route rather than being funnelled through the same form.
A clean handoff to the apps
They run booking apps on iOS and Android. The site’s job is to get somebody to the right one rather than to duplicate what the app already does well.

The previous Social Football Australia venues page, from the early 2026 redesign by WebOws Design, organised by state and then by ground so each area has something to rank on — The previous site, after the redesign: venues by state and then by ground. The same structure that helps a player find their pitch is what gives each area something to rank on, and the rebuild kept it.

The previous Social Football Australia site on a phone, from the early 2026 redesign by WebOws Design, with book a game above the fold — The previous site on a phone, after the redesign: book a game above the fold, on the device people actually book from.

A review

“WebOws delivered a sharp, high impact redesign of the Social Football Australia website. Speed was a standout from day one: fast turnaround at every stage, changes implemented quickly, no delays, no chasing. Communication was just as strong, led by Owen: clear, direct updates throughout, quick responses to questions, no confusion around timelines or scope. The final result is clean, professional, and built to convert. I would highly recommend Owen & his team.”
Richard GentryWebsite redesign · Google