Marketing

If you read the companion article to this one, the Top Ten Mistakes in Dive Store Website Design, you know that there are a lot of ways in which otherwise good dive store websites can go wrong. And, while it is easy to criticize, what’s more important is to show how to do things right. That’s why we have this article.

Truly effective dive store websites share a number of features in common. If you can learn what these features are, then incorporate them into your store’s website, chances are you’ll increase sales and profits.

How This Article Works

In the pages that follow, we describe a number of features effective dive store websites share. Each of these pages will contain one or more links to a dive store website where you can see actual examples of what we describe. (These links open in a separate window, which you can close when done.)

There are a number of good dive store websites we could have used to illustrate each of the points in this article. The catch is, because these are good websites, they are constantly being changed and updated. That put us at risk of linking you to pages which might no longer contain what it was we wanted you to see.

To solve this problem, we created a complete — but entirely fictional — website for a dive store that doesn’t exist. We call this store Spring Country Dive Adventures, and located it in the town of Gainesville, Florida. The website is real; only the store is phony.

To make our website seem as real as possible, we pretended our phony dive store certifies through PADI and is a dealer for AquaLung, SeaQuest, Suunto, Dive Rite, Atomic and Henderson. The principles we cover, however, will work for almost any dive store, regardless of training agency affiliation or product line.

You may want to spend some time poking around the Spring Country Dive Adventures website, just as though it belonged to a real store. You may find a number of ideas worth taking advantage of — ideas that go beyond just website design.

Read whole article here...