How a simple postcode lookup connects every Queenslander to their closest croquet club
Queensland has over 40 croquet clubs. Most people couldn't name one, let alone the one closest to their home.
The Come & Try system changes that. A visitor enters their postcode and the system calculates the three nearest clubs, returning each one with its distance. No club names to remember. No suburbs to look up. No regions to navigate. Just a postcode.
Toowoomba can promote their Come & Try on the same day Caloundra promotes their open day. Brisbane clubs, Gold Coast clubs, regional clubs. They all push people to the same website: comeandtrycroquet.com.
The postcode sorts out which club each person belongs to. Toowoomba sign-ups go to Toowoomba. Caloundra sign-ups go to Caloundra. No one has to coordinate. No one has to build anything.
Each club runs its own promotion and the system handles the rest. The more clubs that promote the site, the larger the coverage across Queensland.
Right now, signing up to try croquet is nearly impossible. There's no obvious place to go. Every club has a different process, or no process at all. People give up before they start.
A member in Brisbane tells a friend on the Gold Coast about croquet. Which club? Where? Who do they call?
With one central website, the answer is always the same: go to comeandtrycroquet.com. The postcode handles the rest. Members can recommend croquet to anyone in Queensland without needing to know a thing about their local club.
The gap between "I'd like to try" and "let's do this" shrinks to thirty seconds.
The only thing a club needs to do is organise the Come & Try programme for when people start showing up. Everything else, the sign-ups, the matching, the follow-up emails, is handled.
Keep It Simple. Clubs don't manage their own sign-up pages. The system handles it. The club only needs to welcome people when they arrive.
Co-operate for Croquet. A centralised service that loses none of its local feel. A sign-up in Toowoomba still goes to Toowoomba. A sign-up on the Sunshine Coast still goes to the Sunshine Coast. The system is shared. The experience is local.