App Details
Golf clubs are often very traditional in their approach and members value the feeling of community and social gatherings (often more than golf itself). We understood this and focussed on delivering an engaging community feeling in the custom app made for the club.
The idea was to deliver engaging features around the social aspect, as well as the game of Golf. We strived to include gamification within the app to maximise the time a user would spend in the app, thus increasing the time interacting with the club's brand.
Key Features
When designing this app, we started with the question, why do people join a Golf club?
The top answers that we came up with were:
learn to play Golf
enjoy time playing a classic game with friends
to socialise while playing
to meet new people
From this, we focussed on Golf features and social features. For people to learn to play Golf, we added engaging tutorials as well as swing analysers so people can see their performance from the side and improve on their swing. Additionally, we matched people who wanted to learn with people who wanted to teach, got them to interact via the app and schedule lessons. This did two key things, addressed the desire to connect with new people and brought an additional stream of revenue to the club (a % of lesson cost).
We had to make sure that the app was easy to use and members could find everything easily. While bringing a modern, technological approach, our design had elements of classic nature and traditions of Golf.
Return on Investment
The club was operating in the premium segment so had an established user base but was keen to grow and appeal especially to the younger generation. For them, an app was perfect but they couldn't effectively maintain and manage the app for it to be successful. Therefore, we provided a totally hands-off option where we built the right solution for them and took it to market.
With our experience, we carefully analysed the analytics of app interactions and slightly modified key features to align with user preferences. In the few months after launch, the club was able to generate 180% ROI from the app which we believe is a good start.
What's Next?
We believe that we can build on from this ROI and exceed 300% in the next 6 months. Our plans are strong for the future with discussions of partnering with a premium equipment provider to be able to sell through the app at a discounted rate to the club's app users. A portion of the sales will go to the club as an additional revenue stream which they plan to invest into more social events and improving the course.