I am proud to say we have reached the seven-year mark at this blog site. Call it the seven-year itch, or call it keeping up with the times, but we are changing the furniture here at Golf Community Reviews. Here’s a quick overview.
A Fresh, New Design
We’ve added a bit more color and contrast to make it quicker and easier to find those sections of our web site of most interest to you. For those who have specific search criteria, we are making it a little easier to find items of interest and refine the list if needed. (Since we have posted nearly 2,000 articles here, better internal search has become a necessity.) We move furniture around our house to promote a new way of looking at things, which often leads to more effective communication. We’ve tried to do the same at Golf Community Reviews.
Going Mobile
I don’t know how great golf course architects do what they do, and neither do I understand how web site design software works, but the new Golf Community Reviews has been rebuilt using something called “responsive design.” This means that if you visit our site on one of your mobile devices (iPad, iPod, etc.), navigation will be much easier than in the past. The layout of Golf Community Reviews on your mobile device will accommodate the size and configuration of your iPad or Android phone or whatever you are using.
Quick Access to More Articles
We will post only the first few paragraphs of an article on the home page, with the option for you to click the “Read More” button if we have captured your attention. That means you won’t have to scroll through long articles to get to others that may be of greater interest to you. And in our newsletter “archives,” we now indicate the headline of the main feature, rather than just the issue date, making it easier to find those articles most helpful to you. (Note: Because we are happy and proud about our new design, we are running this entire article on the home page.)
Reviews You Can Use
Many of the nearly 2,000 articles we have posted here over our first seven years provide objective reviews of golf communities in the southern U.S. With the new Golf Community Reviews, we present a list of the most often read reviews up front on the home page, as well as archived articles listed by state. If you are looking for information on golf communities in, say, South Carolina, our new site will speed the process.
New, More Helpful Links
The redesign has focused us on the need to provide quick access to other sites of interest to our target audience, loosely defined as baby boomers and pre-baby boomers who play golf and are looking toward a meaningful retirement in a climate with virtually year-round golf. These links will be real estate related, golf related and lifestyle related, and they will only be those that, in our opinion, are most helpful. If you have a favorite site that others would appreciate, please let us know. (Contact us.) Also, we are attaching to our articles icons that connect to the most popular social media sites, making it simple for you to quickly share any articles you like on our site with your friends and family.
Your Search for a Golf Home Made Easier, Friendlier
Although dozens of our customers over recent months happily filled out our proprietary Golf Home Questionnaire (click here for access), we will be refining it in the coming weeks, adding a few categories of questions and deleting others that have not been relevant (e.g. most people don’t know whether they intend to get involved in club governance). We are learning a lot from our customers’ feedback on specific golf communities they visit, and we intend to share their comments with others searching for a golf home.
Instant Golf Home Gratification
If after reading one of our golf community reviews, you are favorably disposed to the community, your logical next question is probably, “What are the homes like…and can I afford them.” Our companion web site, GolfHomesListed, makes it easy to figure that out. With our new site design, we have gone back to look at published reviews to ensure they include a link to current golf homes for sale in that community. (If we do not list homes for sale in a community of interest to you, just contact us and we will be sure to get you a few sample listings.)
Home of the Week
Beginning with the debut of our new design, each week we will feature prominently on our home page one current property for sale in a golf community we have visited and can recommend. It may not be the least expensive home available, or the most expensive, but in the opinion of those real estate pros we work closely with, it will represent an extreme value.
Can We Get a Witness? Yes.
Many people rely on a friend or relative to recommend a real estate agent; we don’t have a relative in the business but we do have satisfied customers we have helped to find their dream golf homes in the southern U.S. And they are happy to share their experiences with our audience. Look for some of those testimonials at our new Golf Community Reviews.
Picture this
The software that drives our new site provides added flexibility to install additional user-friendly options. One of those is a photo gallery. On any given golf course, I take a few dozen photos for every one we post. To provide an even better sense of golf course layouts and design, we’ll be adding thumbnail photos along with the larger ones we post, giving you an opportunity to see more photos in one place on our site. And we intend to add scorecards from the courses we play as well. Stay tuned.
When I push the furniture around at home, sometimes my wife likes it and sometimes she doesn’t. If there are any aspects of the new web site design you do not like, please let us know and we will gratefully consider your input. The new Golf Community Reviews is designed to make it easier for you to navigate the site, find what you are looking for and make your search for your dream golf home easier. Please help us accomplish that.