Golfers want a tee time, today's rate, and current course conditions. Publishing those three well matters more than photography, and conditions updates are the content that brings people back.

The three things every visitor wants

Can I get on, and when. Tee time availability, ideally bookable directly.

What does it cost. Which varies by day, time, season, and status, and which most courses publish confusingly.

What is the course actually like right now. Whether it is open, whether carts are on paths, whether greens have been aerated, and what the weather has done to it.

Everything else, including the photography most course sites lead with, is secondary to those three.

Rates, presented so they can be read

Golf pricing is genuinely complicated and it is usually presented worse than it needs to be.

What varies: weekday against weekend, time of day with twilight and super twilight rates, season, nine against eighteen holes, whether a cart is included, and member or resident status.

The workable presentation is a table by day and time band, with cart inclusion stated, rather than a paragraph describing the arrangement.

Also worth stating clearly: what is included, whether a cart is mandatory at certain times, range balls, and taxes. A rate that turns out to exclude the cart is the most common complaint on course sites.

Twilight cutoff times should be exact rather than approximate, since a golfer planning around a rate change needs the minute.

Conditions, which is the return-visit content

The most valuable and least maintained element.

Regular golfers check conditions before deciding where to play. A course reporting honestly on greens, cart policy, and any work in progress is the course they can plan around.

What to publish: whether the course is open, cart path restrictions, aeration schedules well in advance, any holes affected by work, and frost delay information in shoulder seasons.

Aeration deserves particular emphasis. Golfers plan around it, and a course that publishes dates in advance avoids the arrival that produces a bad round and a worse review.

Frost delays are the same. A morning update saved a golfer a wasted drive, and they remember which course told them.

Booking

Online tee time booking is now expected rather than a differentiator, and the details matter.

How far ahead booking opens, whether it differs for members, what the cancellation policy is, and whether a card is required to hold a time.

The cancellation policy deserves prominence, since no-shows are a real cost and golfers need to know the terms before they book rather than after they cancel.

Where you use a third-party booking platform, the site should still carry the rates, since a booking widget showing a price without context is not the same as a rate page.

The other revenue lines

Each of which deserves its own page.

Memberships, with what each tier includes, the total annual cost, whether it is paid monthly, initiation fees if any, and booking privileges. Members are the financial foundation and the pages selling membership are frequently the thinnest on the site.

Tournaments and group events, which is high-value work. Minimum group sizes, what a package includes, catering, and how far ahead to book.

Leagues, including when they run and whether the course is affected on those evenings, which regular golfers need to know.

Lessons and the professional, with rates and availability.

Food and beverage, including whether the restaurant is open to the public, which is a separate customer entirely.

The practical information

The scorecard is worth publishing properly, since a golfer deciding whether a course suits them wants the yardages and the rating rather than photographs.

The rest

Photographs of actual holes rather than generic golf imagery, ideally with hole descriptions, since that is what a first-time visitor is trying to assess. Accurate seasonal opening and closing. And a clear route for group enquiries, since that is the highest-value contact the site receives, which follows the same availability-and-conditions pattern as in websites for campgrounds and RV parks.

Frequently asked questions

What do visitors actually want?

A tee time, today's rate, and current course conditions. Everything else including the photography most sites lead with is secondary.

How should rates be presented?

As a table by day and time band, with cart inclusion stated explicitly. A rate that turns out to exclude the cart is the most common complaint.

What is the most valuable content?

Conditions updates. Regular golfers check before deciding where to play, and a course reporting honestly on greens and cart policy is one they can plan around.

Why publish aeration dates in advance?

Golfers plan around them, and a course that does not publish them produces the arrival that leads to a bad round and a worse review.

What is usually thinnest on a course site?

Membership pages, despite members being the financial foundation. State what each tier includes, the total annual cost, fees, and booking privileges.

What should be published besides photographs?

The scorecard with yardages and rating, which is what a golfer deciding whether a course suits them actually looks up.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Rate page nobody can work out?

We put the rates in a readable table and set up the conditions updates that bring regular golfers back to the site.

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