Newsletter January 2024

Golf Legend,

This is the first monthly newsletter from GolfLists.com! It is the January newsletter, my apologies that I am sending it a bit late. Another thing, one of my toxic traits is that I can only spot typos after I click send, forgive me!

What to expect in these newsletters?

1. Monthly Update on Website and Community Progress
2. Features on our members' adventures, or any great golf deals we come across in our research
3. Feature Roadmap Overview
4. Monthly prize draw winners announced

1. Monthly Update

Metrics:

• 13.7k Google Search Impressions || 407 Clicks from Google Search
• 89 GL Newsletter Members || 77 GL Club Members || 3 GL Ambassadors

The site 'beta' (i.e. test version) went live in August 2023, and up to now has been a period of user testing, feedback collection and improvements to the site. That will continue for a while, and I want to encourage you to directly message, or email me if you have any cool ideas for how the site can develop. The great advantage to being a solo developer, with no investors, is I can launch new features in a day and don’t need permission from anyone; so if you suggest something viable I will build it! I want this site to be a reflection of what golf club members and traveling golfers want most to help them in their quests, and gamify the process as much as possible. Note, where I refer to members I will always refer to them by their username, therefore your anonymity is in your control; there is no requirement for your name to be public on GolfLists.

Currently, the main features on the site are:

1. Lists – searchable, filterable, map-able, lists of golf information for your research; these records can be updated by members of a golf course and GolfLists Ambassadors (any course)
2. Record – record, rank and map your played and bucket list courses
3. Connect – for now this holds the "played courses" leaderboard and links our forum
   • In the future, Connect will include super-cool matching features, that will match golfers based on their respective club memberships and bucket lists. This will work a bit like Thousand Greens, but you'll have more flexibility over which club members can match with you.
4. Public Profile - by filling in your profile, you get a shareable public GolfLists profile, that acts a bit like a golf CV, with maps, badges etc. I am hoping that some people choose to link to their Golf Lists profile on their social media profiles!

2. Member Shout Outs / Golf Deals

Member Shout Outs:

• A shout out to GL Member golfyboy84 who has given me permission to use his amazing golf course drone photography on the site - you can check out his website here.
• A shout out to muffinmandan who has shared his knowledge of Opens with GolfLists, you can check out his Opens Golfer web-app at: opensapp22.web.app.
• If you have any bucket list adventures coming up and just been and would like to write about them, please get in touch with your idea and we will publish your feature / blog on the site.

Deals of the Month:

• Royal Porthcawl £125 weekday green fee up to March 31st, with coffee and bacon roll on arrival included. Green fee is £220 in summer.
• Cavendish Golf Club "country membership" is only £360, handy if you are looking to add a Top 100 club membership, to your home club, to help with reciprocal networking.

3. Feature Roadmap Overview

Gone live this month:

• The first 'sortable' list of UK & Ireland Slope Ratings I have seen anywhere on the internet (i.e. you can sort to show the hardest courses by viewing the "Scorecard" list on this page)
  • FYI: the hardest courses we have found so far are, Wentworth (West), Chart Hills and Forest of Arden; with their back tees all having a slope of 153
• Golf course 'about' descriptions for 1000+ courses
• County Ranking Pages, with maps highlighting the top 5 in county (e.g. Kent)
• Golf course pages new design live, with public transport map, architects, about paragraph, green fees etc. (e.g. Hollinwell)
• Golf club page new design live (e.g. Royal St George's Artisans)
• Played Course Leaderboard live (MichaelVerity currently leading on 301 courses!!)
• Added County Flags
• Improved Public Profile Page
• Course Rankings on web now have a tile view option, as well as the table view
• Lists, except rankings, are now members' only

Roadmap Development Priorities (public on our Discord page):

• Add more leaderboard views e.g. counties, collections, course style etc.
• Add 'newest course photos' slider on homepage
• Make homepage different if you are already a member
• Meet the Ambassadors Page
• Add Profile Photo upload option (you can send me a picture directly current)
• Enhance achievement badges and gamification on profile page
• Release basic practice facility database e.g. Top 100 England

4. Monthly prize draw winners announced

Congratulations! Our members below have all won a limited edition Adidas x GolfLists cap. Please respond to this email with your name and a delivery address and I will get them delivered to you asap. Better prizes are coming down the line also...

• James_Smith has won GolfLists Ambassador of the month
  • Jay (@1phys) has uploaded some incredible photos of golf courses in Ireland, as well as helping me test the site and highlight some bugs! Thank you Jay!
• Ginger.Golf has won Contributor of the Month
  • ginger.golf (@ginger.golf) has given me detailed feedback in the Discord forum as well as literally mocking up page designs for the golf course and leaderboard pages. We also appreciate the shout out on your recent video on Burnham & Berrow. Thank you gg!
• DayMitton has won the Random GL Member Draw for January
  • DayMitton a 14 handicap member of Rossendale Golf Club in Lancashire has won our random GL Member draw for January 2024 - congrats Mitton!
  • NB: To be eligible for this, you simply need to have updated your username and played courses list on the site; and the usernames are drawn at random.

That's it, thanks very much again, for giving GolfLists a try; and do contact us via the contact page or socials if you have any feedback!

All the best,
GolfLists.com