Top Ten Mistakes in
Dive Store Website Design
Dive store websites can suffer from the same design mistakes common to all websites. “Splash” screens, “Mystery Meat” navigation and hard-to-read text are just a few of the blunders many dive store websites share with websites in general.
There are ten goofs, however, that are especially bad when dive stores do them. In this article, we will look at each of these and how you can avoid them. Then, once you have learned what not to do, we will show you several things you will definitely want to do in our companion article, Secrets of Effective Dive Store Websites.
Here is what we cover in this article:
10. Too Much Text, Too Little Info
9. Hiding From Google
8. No Corresponding eNewsletter
7. “Mailto” Links
6. Do-It-Yourself Websites
5. Sites That Make Users Hunt for Answers
4. No Clear Path to Certification
3. Stale, Outdated Information
2. Websites That Never Change
1. No Website at All
10. Too Much Text, Too Little Info »
Okay, Just Who Says These are Mistake?
Web design is not an exact science, nor is there universal agreement as to what constitutes good and bad web design. Nevertheless, there are recognized experts in this field, people like Jakob Nielsen, Jeffery Zeldman, Steven Krug and June Cohen, whose expertise big corporations pay equally big money to get.
You don’t have to pay big bucks, however, to take advantage of this expertise. Just read their books. We have, and it has been time well spent.
Even if there is not totally universal agreement as to what constitutes good web design, there are some widely held principles, and it is on these principles that this article and its companion piece, Secrets of Effective Dive Store Websites, base themselves. (That and a lot of hands-on experience designing and maintaining real dive store websites.)
If you’d like some lighter reading to get you started in learning more about website design and usability, we recommend Vince Flander’s famous Websites That Suck. Flander’s contention is that you can learn good design, in part, by studying bad design (and have fun doing so). Enjoy.
10. Too Much Text, Too Little Info »
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