No one books an instructor course on impulse. The person reading your IDC page is preparing to leave a job or take an extended break from one, travel across the world, invest a significant share of their savings in a course, and then take an exam run by examiners they have never met. They read everything, over several months.
We know this experience directly. Over the past few years, we have been progressing from Assistant Instructor toward Master Instructor through a sponsorship program run with PADI Asia Pacific, and therefore understand the questions candidates face.
Since last year, we have also been carrying out web work for Crystal Divers in Sanur, and all content related to professional courses is written with these candidates in mind. Here is what a professional course page requires.
How do future dive instructors research an IDC?
The PADI Instructor Development Course, or IDC, prepares divemasters to become instructors. It is followed by the Instructor Examination, or IE, run by PADI on set dates in set locations. Candidates who pass are qualified to teach. PADI describes the path on its going pro page, from divemaster through instructor and beyond.
Consider the person choosing where to take the course: Bali, Thailand, Egypt, the Philippines or Honduras. Dozens of centres display an attractive reef photo and the words "IDC available." What does this person actually need to know?
- The total cost, with nothing hidden.
- When the next course starts and when the next exam takes place.
- Who the Course Director is, and what their track record is.
- What a typical day on the course involves.
- Where they will stay, and the cost of living there for a month.
- Whether people who trained there found work afterwards.
Most dive centre websites answer one of these questions, sometimes two. The rest is covered by "contact us for details." For a cautious candidate comparing ten schools, this suggests a reluctance to disclose information.
Why do professional courses require long, detailed pages?
Short attention spans and concise web copy are frequently emphasized. This advice suits a snorkelling trip, but not a professional course.
Someone preparing to commit this much time and money wants detail. They will read two thousand words if those words answer their questions. They will print the page, share it with their partner, who has questions of their own, and return to it five times before writing to you.
An IDC page should therefore be long. It should present the entire program week by week: what is covered, what the exam involves, the prerequisites and what happens afterwards. Use headings that match what people type into Google, so that someone searching for IDC prerequisites lands on the section about prerequisites.
Length must not come at the expense of relevance, however. Every paragraph should answer a question a candidate would actually ask; any paragraph that does not should be removed.
Which testimonials build trust with candidates?
Candidates also want to hear from someone who has completed the course. Another candidate, in their own words, carries more weight than anything the dive centre says about itself.
On most dive websites, testimonials consist of one or two lines, such as "Amazing course, great team!" Such statements carry little credibility.
A real person's story is more effective: where they came from, why they chose that centre, what was difficult and where they went on to work, accompanied by a photo of them in the water rather than a stock image. Such a story is longer, less polished and more credible. One authentic account of this kind has more impact than a page of five-star quotes.
The timing of the request matters. Immediately after the exam, candidates are relieved and satisfied, and readily agree. A few months later, once they are teaching elsewhere, they have a more complete story to share. Ideally, the request is made twice.
Should IDC dates and prices be published?
Yes. This is the recommendation dive centres resist most strongly.
Many prefer not to publish prices. They are concerned that a competitor will undercut them, or that a candidate will see the figure and leave without enquiring. Some prefer to "build rapport first."
These concerns are understandable, but in our assessment they lead to the wrong decision. The candidate will learn the price in any case. If you do not provide it, the centre that does will receive the email. Publish the price on the page, state precisely what is included and what is not (materials, PADI fees, the exam, accommodation), and place the next course and exam dates alongside it. If your price is higher than a nearby competitor's, explain why. Customers accept a higher price when they understand what it covers.
Dates are equally important. A candidate planning to leave a job needs to know when to give notice. A page stating that "courses run regularly" does not meet that need.
How does this approach align with Google search?
There is also a search-related reason. Last fall, Google announced that it had rebuilt its core search with an update called Hummingbird, designed to handle longer, more conversational questions and to match them with pages that answer them. In our interpretation, someone who types "how much does a PADI IDC cost in Bali and what's included" is increasingly likely to land on a page that sets this out clearly, and less likely to land on a thin page that repeats "IDC Bali" five times.
One update alone does not establish a trend, but Google's actions over the past two years consistently point in the same direction: pages that answer the question clearly and completely are well positioned.
Language is the other gap. Many IDC candidates in Bali come from Europe, and English is their second or third language. A carefully written page in English and in the main language of your largest market has more value than a significant amount of advertising, and bilingual copywriting by someone who writes naturally in both languages consistently outperforms machine translation.
For centres offering professional courses, we recommend a simple first step: list the ten questions candidates most often ask by email, then answer each of them on the page, before anyone needs to ask.