Why Your Club Website is the MVP of Your Membership Team [ep. 37]

Websites are constantly evolving. No longer is your website an online brochure. It should be a critical part of your membership and marketing team. Remember the early days of websites? Some businesses didn’t think they even needed one. They were really basic and let’s face it, were more of a digital brochure. Lots of copy, a few pictures and of course, no video. In the early years, the idea of having a website that could drive new members, increase revenue and answer questions for members and prospective members was unheard of. It just didn’t exist.

Today, people who come to your website want to know more about your amenities, your staff and mostly, they want to know about your members to see if they’ll fit in. They are looking for answers and they want them now - are you able to help them, even if it’s after hours?

In this episode, Lisa Schmidtke, a seasoned website developer and designer, and I get into websites to talk about what you can do to make your website the top performing of your membership team. 

Episode Highlights:

• 2:53: Ed and Lisa discuss the missed opportunity in having website images of amenities without people.
• 5:03: What is organic search as it relates to a website and why that matters when it comes to getting found online.
• 7:39: Ed explains how most club websites are missing key pieces of information that help them get found online.
• 9:14: The impact of a blog on your website.
• 12:06: Ed and Lisa talk about how blog content can attract the next generation members who are looking for kids activities online and may not realize they can find them at your club.
• 14:58: Ed and Lisa talk about automating your new member inquiries.
• 17:22: Optimizing the time your Membership Director spends with prospective members.
• 23:33: Lisa talks about what progressive club leaders should think about when building a new public facing website.
• 27:31: Lisa and Ed talk about hidden costs and the fact that when some website developers in the club space offer "free" public facing websites, they're not really free.

Podcast Transcript

Ed Heil [00:00:00] Hey there, Lisa. How are you doing today?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:00:03] I'm great. How are you, Ed?

Ed Heil [00:00:04] I'm doing just fine, thanks. Thanks for for joining in on the fun here with Crushing Club Marketing.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:00:10] Happy to be here.

Ed Heil [00:00:11] All right. So in full disclosure, Lisa and I do work together. So the conversations that we're having have been had before to some degree, but to frame it up for you to just, you know, to be able to hear some some different thoughts around web design and development, you know, we thought that it might be helpful for Lisa to share her insights because Lisa, as we mentioned, has her career has been in building and designing websites and and so much more expert in this area than I am, for sure. So looking forward to the conversation today, Lisa.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:00:51] Yeah, I am as well.

Ed Heil [00:00:52] All right. So let's just talk a little bit about we'll just dive right into this because club websites are, you know, depends first of all, it depends on the type of club you're at. We recognize the fact that there are some clubs and there's very few, but there are, you know, the elite clubs in this country that really don't need to worry about this. I mean, in my opinion, I think in I think you would agree that all clubs really should think about how they're presenting themselves online these days, because it's an opportunity to show your club off and your space, your membership to some degree. But recognizing this might not be a priority for some clubs or for the vast majority of other clubs. How they look and come across online is pretty important.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:01:37] Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. In just like you said, even if they're not using it as a marketing tool or a lead generation tool, you know, inevitably somebody, one of their members may be a guest of a member is going to go to access the website. And, you know, it's got to reflect the vision and the professionalism of the course.

Ed Heil [00:02:00] Yeah. And so when we talk about websites and the conversations that we have with club leaders, so often they go to the functionality of the back end and there are some very strong developers of the back end experience for for members and they're getting better and better. And that member experience in the back end is getting better and better. Well, we're going to talk about today is really that front end that what we always refer to internally is the public face and that part of your website where when I'm searching your club and I find you that side of the website, that is where we're going to spend most of our time today. And so let's just start with there. Like why does that matter? Why? Why are we spending time today talking about the importance of that side of the website?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:02:53] Yeah, you know, I say it's because, you know, as far as the private the member side, as we call it, you know, that the software that most people are using do do a fine job of of allowing people to make a tee time and sign up for dinner reservations and, you know, things like that. But and most of that functionality people are getting from their their app anyway. But really with the front with, the front facing side since the members are really just looking to come to the website, do what they need to do, log in and move on. If they go to the website at all, the the majority of the websites should be focused on on the front facing and and by that I mean the copy, the graphics, the design should, should be designed so that prospects can actually see themselves at the, at the club and envision what it would be like to be a member there.

Ed Heil [00:03:46] Yeah. And as I was saying, you know, in the in the intro to our conversation, today's, you know, in talking to so many club leaders through the years in fact there's there's one at one of my CMAA workshops we use one of the clubs as the organizer of the, the host of the event I should say, we use his club as an example in a lot of beautiful spaces, a lot of beautiful amenities, but no people at all. And which is really, I think, you know, is that that's one of the biggest mistakes that we probably see out there, isn't it?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:04:24] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, because what happens in is the photos often look like stock photography. People can't even tell if it's really a photo of the club or not. And then back to what I said, it's really hard for a person to envision and see what it would be like using that pool, playing that course, if there are no people on the course and in the pool.

Ed Heil [00:04:45] Right. Everyone wants to be able to look at that and go, Can I see myself there? Can I see my family there? Right. And if it's stock imagery, let's face it, stock images look like stock images. I mean, they look kind of hokey, right? I mean, there's some. They're better than others, but for the most part, kind of hokey.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:05:02] Yeah, for sure.

Ed Heil [00:05:03] All right. From the back. From a development perspective, let's just talk about that. You know, as far as, you know, and you've been you've seen the back end some, you know, some club websites today, they're missing certain elements that would enhance organic search. Can you just talk about what is organic search? Why does it matter and what, what's missing?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:05:29] Yep. Yeah. So organic search, you know, that that is, you know, not to be too elementary here, but that is, you know, somebody puts a keyword into the search engine. There are paid ad results below that and on on pages beyond the first page there are organic. So the goal really should be to try to rank as high as you can organically so that you don't have to well, number one, so that you start showing up at all. And number two, that you don't have to then do paid ad strategies. You know, there are a number of of coding practices that a platform should adhere to that backend code, that metadata all important. But, you know, I would say that the web building tools should just automatically be optimized for that. You know, you shouldn't have to work around or spend a lot of time trying to get your code to be up to par for search engines. So that should be a given. And we find that a lot of clubs, software that, you know, that are used for these private club side of of the of their websites, even those are not really built to be optimized for that's a lot of messy code lots going on they're hard to update. So just getting a website on a platform that's just there code and back in is optimized is step one. Really is everything you do beyond that, the and the key to then being ranking high in search engines is to providing valuable educational content on a consistent basis. And that doesn't mean adding a bunch of web pages or spamming it with keywords know a very effective tool for that. And in our world is blogging and with the, you know, blogging, that is how clubs can really help to seed new members in a more detailed way. So not just photos, not just a web page, but information, detailed information highlighting members and staff is a is a really effective tool for that as well.

Ed Heil [00:07:39] All right. I want to go I want to dive a little bit deeper into blogging in a minute, because in the workshops that I've done that always comes up is like because storytelling always ends up with like, well, how should we do it or should it go? And blogging is is one of those vehicles. And we could probably spend a whole other podcast talking about that as well, as well as organic versus paid search and all of us. But anyway, I don't want to complicate it. I do want to just if you're listening to Lisa and you're going, well, code, what is that? And metadata and stuff like that. Just, I do want to try to provide some explanation of that that's not going to go too in-depth. And let me just take a quick crack at at least until or I'm screwed up. Websites are usually built with their, you know, code. Right. And we think about that. And sometimes there's words that go into the back end of the website that tells like, Google. When we talk about search engines, Google is a search engine. Yahoo is a search engine, Right? So there are certain words that go into a website or that should go into the back end of a website that automatically tells search engines certain things about your website, right, like content or what you do or things like that. So we talk about coding, we talk about organic search. We want your website to perform in a way or all web sites to perform in a way so that when people are looking for certain things, whether it's golf courses, tennis facilities, things like that, that your site organically comes up. How do I do?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:09:12] That's perfect. Great job.

Ed Heil [00:09:14] Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. So so just with that as a backdrop, so let's just let's dive into the blogging and organic search thing for a minute here so we can just, you know, hopefully provide some ,some clarity around that because people will say sometimes, like one of the questions I always get Lisa's like, well, when people come to our website, who's how will they find our blog? Yeah, right. Like, that's a common the common thing. So what do you say to that?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:09:44] Yeah, I mean, certainly it should be, you know, promoted all over the website. You know, sometimes we use "pop ups" to say, subscribe to our blog. It should be featured on the homepage. But, you know, a lot of times depending on the topic, search engines like Google, will, will even show the blog before they show your homepage or another page on your website. So if it provides enough information that that user is looking for, it's likely to show up.

Ed Heil [00:10:14] Yeah. And so that's why it's such a great differentiation, differentiation to make, because what people forget sometimes is that a lot of website visitors find a website not through the homepage or if you think about it as your house, not through the front door, but through a side door, which is a blog. So there's a term that I love in and some of the analytics we see, which is entrances, right? Like visits and entrances. And sometimes an entrance is like, how did they enter into that website? And a lot of times like you're saying, they're their biggest their most entrances are coming through a blog post that someone has written.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:10:54] Yeah, exactly. Especially if that blog is then also promoted through social media. So if there is a Facebook post or an Instagram post or something like that that says, hey, you know, here's some information about our club, we just wrote this blog, go read it. Sometimes the social media post will show up on Google before the blog itself, before a Web page, you know, so it's also important to, you know, not just write the blog, not just post the blog, but really promote it.

Ed Heil [00:11:24] Right. So hopefully you're you know, if you're listening, this is this is starting to make some sense to you. And if you just think about it from how you might search for information and what you find, like a lot of times people will say, they say it less now, but they said all the times, like I don't read blogs, you know, like, actually you probably do, but you just don't realize you're reading a blog, right? I mean, it's like, oh, I was just searching for this and I found this great article, right? Yeah. And it's really a blog. And a blog is really just Yeah. I mean, again, correct me if I'm wrong. It's really just another page on your website, is that right?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:11:59] Yes. Yep. That's a way. It's just it's just indexed and promoted in just a different way.

Ed Heil [00:12:06] Okay. So I do want to just go one step deeper on this now that we have this idea of blogging, because what a lot of people says, like, well, what are we going to write that people will find? Or this is maybe that next level question, right? And so what I want you to think about, if you're listening, is today's member or that 42 year old member that you hear a lot of people talking about. And by the way, there is, you know, the greatest transfer of wealth in history will happen in the next, you know, next ten years or I think by 2045, they're saying will be the greatest transition of wealth in history. So there will be young people with discretionary income to spend and they are going to go online to look for a lot of information that may or may not have anything to do with your club. So what I think of is sometimes, Lisa, I'll go, well, you know what? They're going to be looking for things like activities for their kids. At what age should I get my child involved in sports? When should they start taking swimming lessons? How to become a competitive swimmer. Right. What age should I start my child playing golf? And imagine if those people who are searching for those four answers to those questions, if they find blogs that your club has written, then all of a sudden you're coming up on their radar. They might be thinking of a totally different experience for their family, but they come across your website.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:13:35] Yeah. And by the way, they don't want to pick up the phone and call you and they don't want to, you know, wait for information. They want this information, especially the younger generation, right away at their fingertips. If they have to pick up the phone, that's a barrier to entry. They won't do it.

Ed Heil [00:13:49] Right. And, you know, it's funny. I'm glad you said that, because what's, if you think about that a little bit more, you know, we'll talk about that target member prospect who knows like, well they don't do this and they won't do that. But what you really need to do is think about yourself. Right? It's like I don't, I don't shop or look for things, especially like things like a private club membership between eight and five. You know, it's at night and it's on the weekends, and it's when I have the time to do it. And you're into your point is like, I want the information when I want it, not when you're available for it. And you can you can argue the fact that, it's like, well, that's not the type of club we are. And and that's fine. And some people will, well, you know, be okay with that, but some people may not and they'll move on to the next club in your in your market.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:14:42] Yeah that's right. You know, or it'll just take them longer to become a member or become your prospect. So you know, it's getting them in the door as soon as you can and providing the information as quick as they can.

Ed Heil [00:14:58] Right. Okay. So just. Really quickly recapping because we're going to move on to that. Next thing that we're talking about is that people don't want to wait until you're in the office on Monday or Tuesday because you're closed on Monday or whatever. So the idea that the front end of your website or the public facing part is really important, and that with that, that part of your website, you can leverage that so that more people find you through organic search. Or when they go to your website, they can find more information that is sometimes in the form of a blog, and blogs are helpful for helping you get found for certain things. They answer questions and it's helpful information, and it also tells search engines that you are known for or an expert in some of these areas or these topic areas. So I just want to make sure everyone's everyone's staying with us here because, you know, ultimately, if we can provide people more information so they can determine whether or not the club is right for them because you've given them so much information that should make your the life of your membership director a little bit easier. Right, Because people will self-select out. But what they're going to do and we know this and this is the next part that, you know, is is part of this whole evaluation of your website is really, you know, having the information that your prospective members need. And I'm sorry that your prospective members want when they come to your website. A lot of times today, you, you know, websites, club websites, you guys have contact forms and people will fill that out, which is great. And what I usually hear is that, yes, someone fills out a contact form we receive at the membership office and then I send a letter to that person or an email with membership information, and I'll usually ask and I'll say, Do you call them first? Do you try to qualify them before you send that membership information? People nine out of ten times say, No, I just get it and I just send them because that's what they want. They want the membership information. So it takes some time. The person has to wait to get what they want. You know, your membership person has to take the time to send that email. Even if it's a copy and paste, they still have to take the time to do that. What's a better way to to make that happen?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:17:22] Yeah. So I think you need to have, you know, sections of your website that, number one, they're gathering information along the way. And so these might be people who are not ready to reach out and become a member. They might not even be ready to receive pricing and all the information that they need. But there are certain pieces of content that websites and clubs can offer for those just kicking the tires. And maybe these are people who are not qualified quite yet to be a member of your club. Maybe they're looking for more or less or something different. So like you said, you want to allow those people to kind of opt out, know that themselves if they're not ready, and then the membership structure doesn't have too to waste time for that. But for some items like pricing and membership, more deep membership information, you know, that could be offered automatically, but not necessarily for free. And what I mean by that is you can ask the prospect for a little bit of information about them in the end with the form. So there's a form that says just just give me your name, phone number or email. You might not call them right away because maybe it's a piece of content that's just giving a little bit more of information about you. But now they're in your system so that at some point you could reach out. When they do get to that prospect level that request a tour, contact me now phase and while they're in this dip in their toe and in the prospective member phase, you kind of don't have to worry about them at that point.

Ed Heil [00:18:58] Right. So that whole idea of having like almost different levels of interest. Right. Like kind of interested I kind of like your blog is helping me to learn more, right? Maybe you're not really ready for a phone call or tour or anything like that versus when someone is saying, hey, you know, let's say download our membership guide for more membership information, download our membership guide or something like that. That's probably a little bit more of a serious prospect.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:19:25] Yes. Yeah, it is. But that person might not be the at the request a tour stage yet. Right. So Yeah. So varying levels of interest and it's all just about getting the information that your prospects want, how they want it when they want it.

Ed Heil [00:19:41] Yeah. And I think you know, just this whole idea of allowing people to opt out, to self-select out, like, I get your membership, you know, your initiation and your monthly dues. And I'm like, Ooh, I didn't know it was going to be that much. Right? Then then your membership person isn't spending time with the tour, is it? Like, you know, and we all know the line, which is like, Hey, if I can get someone in for a tour, then I can usually, you know, convert them, which is great. But how many tours do you do with an unqualified prospect? You're like, you know, you get through the tour and they're like, Oh, wait, I didn't know it'd be that much. I'm not interested. Right.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:20:19] Right. And how many more leads could you be gathering if you didn't make people request to, you know, take a tour just to find out if they kind of like you or not.

Ed Heil [00:20:28] Exactly. Totally. Yeah. So having additional information, making it easier for people to understand what your club is all about, and then ask and then converting them in a way that really makes sense for that prospective member. But also something that streamlines that process for your membership team is huge.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:20:49] Yeah, yeah. We hear from a lot of membership directors, you know, they are a team of one and then when they're not there, it might be the receptionist giving a tour and it might be, you know, somebody in the back office that's, you know, sending out this information. So a lot of times it's, you know, a shoestring kind of team. And so in this way, this process that we're talking about, where you're offering this bit of content, you're asking them for an email, maybe you're setting up an automated email campaign to kind of stay in touch with that person until they're ready to buy. You know, your what you're doing there is creating a whole 'nother salesperson really, right. That you don't have to worry about.

Ed Heil [00:21:30] It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:21:34] Yeah. We we heard some statistics recently that say it takes about 8 to 12 touchpoints for a prospect to become a customer. And, you know, I was just talking with a membership director today that said, you know, think how much time do you have to reach out to somebody 8 to 12 times of your list of, say, 100 leads. They don't have that time.

Ed Heil [00:21:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we all know that people in the membership roles are are overworked in many ways. I mean, there's a lot that they're responsible for and that they have to keep track of. Okay. There's probably a whole I know there's another, another conversation around that whole idea of what happens once someone converts and this ah, you know, there's a whole conversation around how do we as we would say, nurture those contacts? You know, like so often in a membership office, someone will fill out a form like that on the website and if they're not ready, then the membership director just disregards, or throws the form away or, you know, and then they wait till the next time instead of trying to stay in touch with them. So we'll talk about that later. Just some final thoughts, Lisa, from your perspective, and I'll put you on the spot a little bit. We didn't really prep for this in our pregame, but but I'm just wondering, like, what do you, for someone who's listening to this going, yeah, you know what, we do need to update our our club website, what will be the things that you would say are most important for that club leader to really think about as they think about because they're thinking just redesign, right? And sometimes they might even think, well, hey, our our, our web provider right now is going to do it for free, Like they're not even going to charge us. But what are the things that they need to take and consider into consideration?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:23:33] Well, you know, right away, you know, think about it like you're building your house. You're getting your house in order, you know, and you're not going to build your house on Styrofoam or, you know, sand. You're going to build it structurally sound. So the first thing right off the bat is using web building tools that are right away, just like we said, built, built so that search engines can find them. They a lot of the tools we use are are you can automatically migrate onto the platforms we use and immediately they're more modern. So we even say even if you just have the budget to migrate off of your WordPress site or your club software site and onto a platform like what we use, it's going to automatically elevate, modernize the look and feel of your website.

Ed Heil [00:24:25] What does that mean, though, when you say I mean, I get like modernize the look and feel, I don't really know, you know, just thinking for someone who might be listening, what does that mean?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:24:35] Yep. So there are certain practices. You know, we see now that, you know, that are much different than websites even five years ago. And the reason being, is because websites now need to respond quickly to whatever device somebody is using. Most people looking at your website or not on a desktop, probably. They're on a phone. So your website needs to respond to whether the size of the phone, whether you're on an iPad, things like that. So the navigation needs to work a little differently. The way that the photos work around the text needs to respond so that it's easy to scroll and read. You don't get to choose that you want this navigation on the left hand side, you know, right there next to this one little graphic, you can't get that picky. But it does need to be readable and look nice for the user. A lot of white space.

Ed Heil [00:25:27] You got it. Yeah, isn't it interesting. All right. So let's keep going. So. So right away, you know, it's like getting it. Make sure I think your thought is. Make sure that you're building this new site on a modern template or templates going to that will allow you to sort of modernize your website. What else do you think?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:25:48] Yep. Well, like we talked about before, you know, graphics. So another part best practice of new modern professional websites are lots of graphics, big graphics, video, even at the top. So you pull up your website. Boom. We've all seen the drone video of your course doing the flyover. You know, that's like that's come and it looks nice. But somewhere along the way you need to show people, people playing your course video does that amazingly, because I think people can really see themselves like in the course on the course playing even more than graphics. But if all you have is, you know, a half day photoshoot and a couple of people that are willing to kind of, you know, be stand ins for you. I mean, that's going to elevate it immediately.

Ed Heil [00:26:34] Yeah, for sure. Any other thoughts around that?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:26:40] Probably not a whole lot more without digging too much into the technical aspects of your website, for sure. But I would say just a proper navigation. Making sure that the items in your navigation. I, when, when...One thing that has surprised me over the years of designing websites for private clubs is the number of clubs that don't have golf in their main nav.

Ed Heil [00:27:05] Oh, right.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:27:07] Like what is your most what is your greatest asset? They say our golf course, what we have done in the May NAV and other items that you want to feature events if you're a private club that offers events, especially if you offer rent, space, event space to nonmembers, that's a great sales marketing tool. Your website can really help to boost that revenue.

Ed Heil [00:27:31] Yeah, it's so interesting in again, I mean, this conversation could go on and on with different things to consider, but some of those really basic things like that, you know, when you said when you mentioned that a second ago, I thought about things like, you know, like WordPress, right? It's like, you know, oh, you got to run. Another update. Ooh, do you have that plug in? You like it? Not to say that WordPress is not a good platform and a lot of businesses run on that and it's terrific, but it's, you know, updates and maintenance and all those things and is easy to make changes. Is that user friendly? You know, all those things that you know, whether you are some of you are more technical than others and more capable in this, more comfortable than others. But but just in general, today's modern Web site, like you're saying, lisa, just it is built to be is they say whizzy wig. What you see is what you get. And and that's something that's important to to think about. You know, the idea just you know, one of my last thoughts around that is just the idea that, you know, you don't want to get in a mess up your website, right? Like you want to have the wrong person, like, hey, I'll just make this change. This is something I would do. And then all of a sudden, like, why does this image look like this? But, you know, if there is someone who has some background in web dev that you know, or that is on your staff that can help make some changes or it's not as scary to make some basic things. You know, it can be good to have a platform where you can do that without having to pay 150 bucks for someone to go in and look in, do something, or, you know, it's not a lot of money, but it is something, you know.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:29:08] Yeah, well, like you said, you know, we hear that well, you know, our club software will do our public facing website for free. Well, think about how free that is, because, you know, just like you said, the first thing they'll have to do is start somebody's got to start doing updates. You can't just have the same, you know, code platform, call it what you want, module widgets.

Ed Heil [00:29:28] All right?

Lisa Schmidtke [00:29:28] But, you know, they need to be updated. And then number two, when with when we work with clients to say no, we want us to keep our website where we are, that's great. And then we say, Hey, let's do this membership guide idea where we put a form on there. People have to give you some information before they get the membership guide here. Here's the form. Can you put this on your website? I have heard of some of the software companies charging up to $700 in order to just add a form to their website. So start adding up these costs and you know, it's really not free.

Ed Heil [00:30:02] Yeah, for sure. All right, Lise. Hey, good stuff. Thanks for, uh, thanks for jumping in and helping us out. And we're going to be doing this again. So we're going to not so much this exact format, but we are planning a, a webinar on topics similar to this that we will have, right now, it's early 2024 and will be available once we record it on our website as well. But but thanks for so much for sharing your expertise and I will see you soon.

Lisa Schmidtke [00:30:37] Yes, look forward to that webinar.

Ed Heil [00:30:39] All right, Thanks.