4. No Clear Path to Certification

If yours is like most stores, first-time visitors to your site arrive with a single question: How do I become a certified diver? Unfortunately, many — if not most — dive store websites provide no clear answer to this question.

Take, for example, one dive store we know of in the southeast. The navigation for their website looks like what you see here.

As important as diver training is, you’d think that learning to dive, or at least training in general, would be at the top of this list. It’s not. In fact, it’s buried down below everything from Photo Gallery to Video Clips. Heck, Gear Rental appears to take greater precedence at this store than learning to dive.

Even the name of the link is less-than-clear: Instruction. Is that instruction on how to dive — or the instructions on how to open a box of Rocket Fins?

Let’s say, however, that you decide to click on the Instruction link. Where will that take you?

Very few dive store websites provide a link that takes users directly from the home page to a page dedicated to entry-level diver certification courses. Instead, users find themselves on a page that covers or links to every class the dive store offers.

At this point, all users should have to do is click on the link that says How to Get Certified, right? Guess again.

In most instances, users will find themselves facing another list of links with course titles that mean absolutely nothing to them. Look at the list appearing here. If you had no idea that Open Water Diver was the most common entry-level certification, would you know what link to click?

Even worse, we’ve seen websites where, instead of being presented with a list of course names or descriptions, users are expected to click on a flow chart similar to the ones most training agencies use to map their continuing diver education courses.

While charts such as this can help explain continuing education to people who already understand what is involved in learning to dive, they only serve to baffle most nondivers.

Let’s assume, though, that through luck or perseverance, you have managed to make it to the page (or portion of a page) that describes the Open Water Diver course. Will you find the answers to all your questions there? In most cases, the answer is No.

Look critically at your store’s website. Ask yourself if there is enough information there to adequately answer these basic questions:

• Who can learn to dive?
• What steps are involved in getting certified?
• Where do the classes take place?
• When can you start and how long does it take?
• How much does it cost and what is included?
• What equipment do I need to supply?

Obviously, it will take more than just a sentence or two to adequately answers these questions. In fact, on client’s websites, we devote an entire page to answering each question here. See example (opens in new window).

In addition to providing adequate information, you can help prevent first-time visitors to your website from learning to dive from you competitors by doing the following:

• Make sure your website’s overall navigation scheme has a link, button or tab labeled Training, Classes, Courses, Learn to Dive or Get Certified.
• If a Learn to Dive or Get Certified link, button or tab is not part of your site’s primary navigation, at least have a hyperlink near the top of your home page that screams Click here to learn to dive!

• In the first page or your Training section, make certain that the information on getting certified to dive, or the links to it, are separate and come before all other course descriptions or links.

3. Stale, Outdated Information »

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