Ceningan Divers opened on Saturday, August 1. This article was written in the first week of operations, between dives, and focuses on the part of the opening we know best: the website.
For a business like this one, the website cannot wait until everything else is finished. It has to come first. The centre is on a small island that most travellers have never heard of, and the site is how anyone learns that it exists. Travellers plan their Bali trips weeks in advance, on phones and laptops. If they search for diving on Nusa Ceningan and find nothing, they book with a business they can find.
We have built websites for clients for many years, from Raincity in Vancouver to Crystal Divers in Sanur. Building one for a business we co-own adds another dimension: every decision is also an investment of our own money.
Which pages does a new business website need on day one?
The pages that turn a visitor into a booking: courses, prices and contact information. Everything else can be added later.
With a first website, the temptation is to build everything at once: a page for every dive site, a gallery for every trip, a blog, the history of the island, staff biographies, a FAQ with forty questions. Each of these seems important, but most of them can wait.
For a dive centre, the list for opening week is short:
- The courses, clearly named, with what is included and how long each one takes
- Prices, with actual numbers on the page
- Fun dives and where they go
- How to book, and how to reach a real person
- Where the centre is and how to get there, an important question on an island reached by boat
The story of the island is also on the site, because it is part of the reason guests choose the centre. Ceningan is the quiet island next to the busier Lembongan, and that difference deserves to be stated.
Should prices be published on the website?
Yes. Prices are the item owners hesitate over most, and we have discussed it with many clients. The concern is that a competitor will see them, or that customers will judge on price alone. That concern is understandable. However, a traveller comparing three dive shops will almost always write first to the ones that display a price. "Contact us for rates" tends to be read as "expensive" or "the price depends on who you are." Neither impression helps the business.
The first site is therefore small, and it does its job. Other pages will be added once guests show us what they actually want to know.
When should the Google listing go live?
The same week the business opens, which means starting it before. We recommend this step to every small business opening its doors.
Google's free business listing is now called Google My Business. It launched in June of last year and brought together what used to be Google Places and the Google+ pages for businesses. It places the business on the map, with its hours, phone number, photos and reviews, directly in search results and in Google Maps.
For a dive centre, that listing matters as much as the website, and in some weeks more. A visitor already on Lembongan, looking at a map on a phone, will not read an About page. That visitor wants to confirm that the business exists, that it is open and that it is a short ride away.
Having the listing live in opening week required starting early. Google verifies a business by mailing a postcard with a code to the physical address, and on an island the mail can take a long time. The listing should be started before opening, not after.
The listing should also be completed in full: category, hours, photos of the actual premises and a link to the website. A half-empty listing suggests a business that may not be there when the customer arrives. For most small businesses, it is the least expensive element of local SEO available, and it is free apart from the hour it takes to complete.
What should happen to the website after launch?
New content should be added every week. Many new sites stall at this stage: launch day arrives, everyone is relieved, and nobody updates the site for two years. We have seen this happen to clients, and we have planned to avoid it here.
A new site on a new domain has no history with Google. No other sites link to it yet, and nobody has searched for it. The way forward is to add genuine content steadily, so that search engines have something to find and people have something to link to and share.
For a dive centre, this is straightforward, because the ocean provides material continuously: a photo from the morning dive, a note on the week's conditions, a short description of a dive site, a guest completing an Open Water course. Each item can be small, regular and accurate.
The content does not need to be long; it needs to be consistent. Our target is one addition per week. That is frequent enough for the site to look active, and manageable enough to maintain when the season gets busy and nobody has a spare hour.
Which pages come next?
The launch list deliberately leaves gaps. The next pages are the practical ones for an island reached by boat: getting there from Bali, what to bring and where to stay nearby. They will be added to ceningandivers.com over the coming weeks. After that, guests' questions will guide the list, because every question received by email corresponds to a page someone else is searching for.
What do we recommend to businesses opening this year?
A short site that sells is more effective than a large site that is still under construction. We recommend publishing prices, starting the Google My Business listing before opening, and then adding to both a little at a time, every week.
The site should also be designed for the phone. Google made mobile-friendliness a ranking signal in April, but the more important reason is the guests themselves: they find the centre on their phones, on the fast boat, or in a guesthouse with slow wifi. A slow, awkward site during opening week sends a message about the business, whether or not that message is fair. A good small business website does not have to be expensive. It has to load quickly and answer the questions customers ask.
The finishing work on the premises can continue after opening; at the time of writing, it still is.