The host club for thirteen Opens with the fourteenth in 2011, Royal St. George’s – www.royalstgeorges.com – has chosen CLUBView to re-design and upgrade its website. Live for barely a month, it has already received glowing praise from members and visitors alike.
Club Secretary Christopher Gabbey and Deputy Peter Fawcus decided late in 2009 that the old website needed refreshing in terms of content as well as design. They were determined that the new site should be as low key as possible, letting people’s perceptions of the club and its links course enhance the minimal amount of words on each page while the imagery heightened their expectations.
Christopher Gabbey explains their thinking: “With the Open coming to the Club in 2011, we also wanted to showcase Royal St George’s to a worldwide audience, and to draw attention to the Open without overdoing it. The net result achieves all these objectives and more. We’re an Open venue, so it is a fact that a huge number of golfers already know, have heard of, or have seen, Royal St. George’s. In some ways it makes it easier as we don’t need the website to market the club actively so much as be a fine online brochure for people who are planning to play here.”
Peter Fawcus: “It also needed to integrate with our BRS golf booking system so that visitors can check and request available tee times online, whilst still giving the office overall control. This means visitors go to the website to book, and while they’re there they will probably check out other visitor information, eg. that we provide breakfast as well as lunch and so on. There’s also some useful information about the Open, for example, for those who may want to rent a house or apartment locally for the week.”
Fully integrated
Unlike other systems, the CLUBView website’s software is fully integrated with several other applications, ie. the club’s booking system, EPoS tills and handicapping software to make membership administration and management of updated contact details far simpler. Any changes can be made by members to their contact details, and these are automatically translated into the other applications so the club office runs everything from one membership database, not several, each of which would otherwise need to be updated separately.
Summary: “…looks fantastic…”
Both Christopher and Peter are pleased with the net results, and feel their decision to go with CLUBView has proved to be the right choice to make. The new website certainly acts as a fine online ambassador for the best that English links golf can offer.
But perhaps the member who e-mailed the club office within 48 hours puts it best: “I just thought I’d drop you a brief note to congratulate you on our new website. I think it looks fantastic and does real justice to the club and the surroundings. Bravo!”
CLUBView www.clubview.co.uk