How Your Slow Website is Hurting your Golf Course

People hate waiting.

Impatience is in our DNA. We hate waiting. We hate waiting for buses, we hate waiting for our food at a restaurant, we hate waiting in line at the airport. We hate waiting to tee off.

People hate waiting.

And when impatient people don’t feel a need to wait, they don’t.

This is the case on the internet.

Imagine a golfer in your area searches Google for “Golf Courses in (YOUR CITY).” Google spits out 10 results on the first page and the golfer clicks on one of them. If that website doesn’t load quickly – within 2-3 seconds – it’s no trouble for that golfer to hit the back button and check out another result.

What if that golfer goes on to book a foursome?

This is exactly how a slow website hurts a golf course. The delay in loading the website cost the first golf course the opportunity to convert this golfer into a customer.

The good news is that website speed problems are easy to fix and it’s one of the cheapest and easiest ways to add to the bottom line.

Hеrе are 2 big reasons whу golf courses should take 8-10 minutes for a website speed check.

Website Sрееd IS аn SEO Factor

Search Enginе Oрtimizаtiоn (SEO) basically means “how does your golf course website rank on Google?” Is it #1 on the first page of searches like “(YOUR CITY) Golf”?

There are many factors that go into being number one on Google and website speed is one of them. Gооglе knows searchers don’t likе slow websites so they prioritize quick golf course websites in search rаnkings.

Mоbilе internet users аrе оn thе rise

About half of web traffic comes from mobile devices like iPhones. This tells us that people are on-the-go when they’re searching. When we’re sitting at our desk at work (possibly multi-tasking) we may have a little more patience for a slow-loading website.

But when we’re out and about using our phones to find information online, our classic human impatience takes over.

The effect of this is devastating and understanding why is insanely valuable. So here it is:

When people don’t wait for a golf course website to load, Google registers this as a “bounce.” High bounce rate indicates that a website isn’t helpful or relevant to the user’s search. Because Google cares about its customers (people using its search engine), it doesn’t want to show searchers unhelpful, irrelevant websites. So it penalizes slow loading sites and prioritizes the fast ones.

What to Do About It

Check your golf course website speed right now with this free tool from Pingdom. You’ll see your website load time and an overall performance grade. If you don’t like what you see, either get in touch with your website developer to make the needed changes or consider if now is the time to upgrade your website altogether.