Your website design is important because your customers care about design. Whether consciously or not, we all react to visuals, and people are naturally drawn to good design. When it comes to your website design, studies have shown again and again that users quickly judge your business based on visuals alone and will often stop using your site if it’s poorly designed.
Here are some more specific reasons why you should update your golf course website design.
Website design impacts how your audience perceive your brand
When a golfer visits your website, they are presented with the first impression of your business long before they see the parking lot. They will judge your business within seconds and start to paint a picture of what it would be like to golf or hold an event at your facility. In these first few seconds, you want to make a positive impact on your audience by making sure the website looks appealing and up to date.
If your website looks like an abandoned derelict vehicle that hasn’t been washed or maintained since Hair Bands were trending, it’s hard to assume the user is conjuring up warm and fuzzy images of lush fairways while they are on the site.
Helps to nurture and generate more leads for ancillary items outside of tee time reservations
The majority of a golf course’s website users are looking to book a tee time however, there are many daily visitors that are searching for places to host an event either on or off the golf course. Ensuring that your website design allows for these users to consume the content they need to make an informed decision is essential to turning a browser into a lead.
Once they are ready to contact you, custom forms should be used for the various types of ancillary offerings at the club. These custom forms should be able to capture and store all of the information collected automatically to produce an efficient lead generation workflow.
Search engines like new and updated content
Many web design elements and practices influence how you publish content on your website, which in turn affects how search engine spiders crawl and index your website.
This is one thing you cannot afford to mess up. If your on-page SEO fundamentals are not up to snuff, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle for visibility from the start.
Aside from how content is published on your website, certain web design elements can directly affect SEO in and of themselves. Web design can be difficult to understand if you’re not familiar with how it works, but to put it simply, your code needs to be SEO-friendly.
Build Trust
People simply don’t trust poorly designed websites. If they see your poor design or the information looks outdated, they won’t trust your site. It’s even possible they will view your site as shady because you don’t have an updated web design.
Think about a person looking to place a bulk order with a manufacturing company. They’re spending a tremendous amount of money, which means if your manufacturing website design doesn’t convey trust, they’ll find another business to fulfill their order.
On the other hand, a professional site signals trust with your audience. They will trust your business and feel comfortable checking it out further.
It’s important to build trust with your audience so they remain on your site. When visitors remain on your site longer, you create more opportunities for your business to capture those leads.
Conversion
Good web design helps guide your users’ eyes and tell them where you want them to look. On your website, your design can draw attention to special offers, highlight calls to action, and help users identify buttons and clickable elements. All these things can help drive users to take the actions you want.
In Conclusion
It’s easy to see why keeping your golf course website up to date with fresh content and a clean look can help to elevate your brand from your competitors. If it’s been over a couple of years since your website has had any major updates then it’s likely time to start thinking about starting the process to upgrading.
Even if your website was recently built, you still owe to your business to ensure that it’s part of the workforce and it optimized to generate results. Check out our article on website SEO here to learn more about putting your golf website to work for you.
