Golf Club Google rankings will fall if site not mobile friendly !!
From 21st April 2015 Google's new algorithm for mobile searches will take into account the "user experience" which in layman's terms means the ease with which they are able to view, navigate and carry out transactions BUT across all devices. So lets take for example a golfer at work who's sneaking a look on his desktop PC at golf courses he wants to go and play on his day off this week with his friends!
Lunch time arrives and he continues the search on his Smartphone and sends links for his friends to view some of the golf course websites he's discovered. Work finishes and at home that evening he sits down with his wife and children to watch TV but his friends send messages with links to other courses so he picks up the family's tablet device to have a look knowing he will get a better quality of the course images on the tablet rather than his Smartphone.
Google refer to these three different device viewings as a "user experience" because the golfer has been visiting exactly the same URL's (web site address) without any loss of quality in the delivery of data nor had any navigational issues. Whilst the pages being viewed adapt to the different screen sizes it is the ease with which the searching can be carried out and sites viewed irrespective of the device that is at the core of Google's new algorithm.
As can be seen on the screen capture (above) of a Google mobile search for "Cheshire Golf Clubs" one of the courses has a mobile website (marked in red) and the other doesn't!. Golfers will very quickly realise that websites that are responsively designed will show the words "mobile-friendly" and will 
automatically tap on those listings. As more and more golf clubs redesign their websites those that don't address the issue will start to fall off the first couple of Google pages... hence the title of this page!
Some reasons why your golf resort/club should have a responsive online presence...
- COMPETITIVENESS
Golfers will benefit from your superior online experience, be more inclined to visit your golf course and are far more likely to share those experiences with their friends across social media platforms which can only be good for the growth of your business! - CONSISTENCY
As we have identified, the inferior user experience when trying to read unresponsive website pages is a major issue as more and more golfers use their Smartphone to research, enquire and book tee times. One of the major advantages of a responsive website is the consistency of design and transaction capability where all the colours, fonts, buttons and funcionality of the experience is identical irrespective of the device... quite simply because you only build one structure ! - FLEXIBILITY
There are many situations where a separate App should be built and marketed separately however for those golf resorts/clubs where there is little commercial advantage in having a mobile app then a responsive website offers considerable savings. This is because only having to build one structure instead of a minimum of two is naturally going to reduce the costs associated with addressing this issue and in the future when changes to the structure are required then it will only involve one upgrade rather than two or more thereby offering longer term savings as well. - ECONOMIC
Of course the world of technology keeps changing and with new devices comes potentially different screen sizes which is of course at the heart of the evolutionary changes we've been talking about. This is why a responsive website design is good news for golf resorts/clubs because it adapts to whatever shape or size that is ever likely to become popular without the need to constantly upgrade your website every time this happens.
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