Description:

Designing the digital future of golf for all New Zealanders.

With over half a million Kiwis playing each year, golf is New Zealand’s most played sport and one of the most cherished. From high school friends to retirees, from serious hitters to casual players, the golfing population couldn’t be more diverse. But they all have one thing in common – a love for the game.

Golf NZ is the governing body for all amateur and professional golf played in New Zealand.
They wanted to update their brand and website to provide an improved and personalised player experience, so they turned to us for help.

The existing Golf NZ website attracted around 55,000 visitors per week, but it was old, stale, not mobile-friendly, and looked amateurish compared with other international golfing sites.
For our first challenge, we needed to revitalise Golf NZ’s brand and bring it into the 2020s. For our second challenge, we needed to create a world-class digital platform that would help future-proof the game, take golf to a broader audience, and increase participation in the sport.

Golf NZ is responsible for collecting and presenting data from all competitions, including club, district, and international events. We had to make sure we included this facet in our overall digital strategy.

We hit the green to conduct user research. We visited clubs, spoke with a diverse range of players, and surveyed Golf NZ’s 180,000+ member database (the largest sports database in New Zealand) to gain a clear understanding of our audience and how they interacted with the game.

We established that most players wanted to do one of four things: find somewhere to play, book a tee, check their handicap, and check/compare their live scores posted during a round. These insights became the foundation for the features of the new website.

We wireframed and mapped out how we could improve the player UX. A fully functioning prototype was created, tested, and fine-tuned over several months. We made sure that both young and old could successfully use and complete tasks on the new platform and across different devices.

One of the most complex parts of the design and development process was around the handicap system, the processing and displaying of tournament results, leader boards and player stats.

As a result of this year-long project, we have delivered a world-class, mobile-first digital platform and brand update for all golf players in New Zealand.

The high-level functionality, features and user experience of the new Golf NZ website has become a benchmark for the code worldwide and is streets ahead of any other golfing site.

Golf NZ can now confidently take its place on the international stage, knowing that they have a platform that enriches the golfing experience of their members today and one that will help guide the sport into the future.