Your website is your shop front. There are many factors that affect the usability of a website, and it’s not only about ‘how it looks’, but also ‘how easy it is to use’. Websites that are poorly designed tend to perform poorly and have sub-optimal Google Analytics metrics (e.g. High bounce rates, low time on site, low pages per visit etc.). Below are some top tips to consider which will allow your golf club to have a website that is aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, engaging, and effective.
Purpose
Your website must be designed with your users in mind. What are your visitors looking for? Green Fee offers, membership information, open fixtures, members area, course guides, scorecards etc. It is important to map out exactly what your users want and give it to them in a nicely designed website.
Communication
People browsing your website tend to want information quickly, so it’s important to communicate clearly, and make your information easy to read and digest. It’s important to have your website say what you want it to say by having the important information at the front of your website.
Image
Images are key, especially in the golf industry. They say ‘an image can speak a thousand words’, so make sure your golf club has nice images before uploading them to your website.
Navigation
It’s very important that you make your website user friendly and to do this, it must have an excellent navigation system. A navigation system acts like a road map to all the different areas of your website. If the navigation is clear, visitors will stay and have a good experience, which ultimately leads to getting more green fees, members, groups etc.
Responsive Design
This is a must! Every website must be ‘Responsive’ or at least mobile friendly. A massive 75% of visitors will view your website through a mobile device. If your website is not mobile friendly you have two options, rebuild it in a responsive layout or you can build a dedicated mobile site which is a separate site specifically for mobile users.
SEO / Google Analytics
Investing time into improving your websites SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is worth its weight in Gold. After all, there is no point on having a nice website if no one can find it! Here are some reasons why SEO for your website is so important: SEO works, SEO will be around for the foreseeable future, it’s cost effective, not have good SEO can be damaging and your competitors are doing it.
Tips:
– Branding/imagery: Make sure your Golf Club logo is on every page of the website. The top left side of the page is where people generally look for it. It might sound obvious but make sure all logos and images are high quality and are the correct shape to fit the website.
– Consistency: Every page should be consistent in design so the visitor is not trying to figure out how to get the information they’re seeking from the site. Using a standardised template is a good way to accomplish this.
