A Guide to the Perfect Club Homepage
Creating the perfect tennis club homepage is a bit more involved than most expect.
Sure, there are a lot of templates out there to help you get the “bones” of a tennis club homepage up and running – but how you create a website that not only drives new membership and business opportunities for your club but is also useful and valuable for your members and visitors at the same time?
Juggling these responsibilities takes a bit of strategic thought and intentional effort.
Below we highlight a few strategies you want to use to make sure that your tennis club website is as well optimized as possible!
Keep a Consistent Identity
Straight out of the gate, it is hugely important that the design of your tennis club website is perfectly congruent with the design, aesthetic, and “atmosphere” of the club that you are promoting.
Any deviation from the branding of your tennis club in the real world on your website is going to create an immediate disconnect.
That disconnect is going to create just the smallest amount of discomfort and distrust, and it’ll be hard for people to visit the site and really think of it as an extension of your club.
Dial-in the colors, the graphics, and the overall layout of your new site to match your club in the “real world” and you’ll have a much better engagement for sure.
Optimize Your Tennis Club Homepage for Members and Visitors Alike
Secondly, it’s important to remember that your website is (first and foremost) a resource for your members, your visitors, and your partners.
Too often folks responsible for designing club websites create things that look beautiful, take advantage of the latest web trends, and overload their sites with content and features that no one is really interested in.
All that does is clutter the place up, tank engagement across the board, and negatively impact not only the website itself but the brand and reputation of the club as well.
Always – ALWAYS – consider your members, your visitors, and your partners before you make any decisions with your website.
Build everything with them in mind (“will this be interesting or important for them?”) and everything else sort of falls into place.
Get Your Members Onboard
The membership area of your tennis club website is likely going to be where all the “action” is, but that’s only going to be possible if your members have been properly onboarded and are excited to take part in this new online community.
The actual onboarding process should be facilitated through the club itself, reaching out (a number of times) to not only alert members to the new website but also letting them know that they are encouraged to join and be active on the platform as much as possible.
It’s never a bad idea to build in different components of the sites to drive engagement, either.
Community forums, membership boards, polls, contests, analysis, and more can all be used to encourage onboarding of your club membership, and participation will increase, too.
Use Social and Scheduling Tools to Drive Engagement
A properly designed tennis club website has a lot of opportunities to become the central hub for all kinds of social activities with your club, not only acting as a scheduling solution (complete with an always up-to-date digital calendar) but also as a social center itself.
Look for ways to create more interaction and engagement with memberships online and really fold them into the member’s area.
You’ll also want to tie your social media accounts into your website as much as possible, creating a real synergy across the board.
Leverage Opportunities for User Generated Content
User-generated content opportunities should be taken advantage of as much as possible.
For one thing, this guarantees that your site is always being updated which in turn drives engagement, interest, and activity. There’s nothing more of a turnoff than a club website that feels like a desolate graveyard.
Secondly, it frees your staff up from having to do the heavy lifting of populating the site with content on a regular basis all alone.
When members are driving the content push it’ll always be content that they are interested in as well. This avoids trying to read the membership’s minds about what they want to share, discuss, or engage in on the website as well.
Build Revenue Generator Opportunities
Lastly, it’s never a bad idea to build as many revenue-generating opportunities into the website as possible – so long as it never (EVER) interferes with membership or visitor access.
The last thing you want to do is plaster the homepage with all kinds of advertisements or sponsorships, making the website (and the club by relationship) look cheap in some way.
Run ads that are discrete, promote sponsorships on separate pages, and look for ways to tie the retail outlets of your club to the website for more effective revenue generation.
