BUSINESS EDU
Designing Demand: Is Your Website Helping or Hurting? By Burcu Mahmutoğlu , PADI IDC Staff Instructor, Dive Cypria, Cyprus
W HEN I FIRST DESIGNED the website for my dive centre, I gave it a conventional job: explain who we were, show what we offered, es- tablish trust and encourage people to contact us. It worked. People found us, enquiries arrived and enquiries became bookings. After four seasons of largely running a busy dive centre solo, however, I realized that generating enquiries wasn't enough. My website was creating work for the business, but it wasn't doing enough work for the busi- ness. I came into diving with an extensive professional background in communications, so audience, messaging and information design weren't new concepts. Running a dive centre added a practical consideration: every piece of communication consumes somebody's time. During high season, the person answering an enquiry may also be preparing equipment, moving cylinders, teaching students, guiding divers and or- ganizing tomorrow's schedule. Time had become one of my most finite resources, and my expertise was needed elsewhere. I stopped asking only, “How do I generate more enquiries?” and started asking, “What kind of demand do I want to generate, and how much of my time should somebody need before deciding to book?” Designing the demand you actually want: Every benefit we promote creates demand for us to fulfil it. At my own centre, we deliberately focus on recreational diving. Our equipment, training and operating standards have been built particularly around recreational divers, beginners, families, women and children. We offer recreational Nitrox diving, but not decompression diving or serious technical wreck penetration. That doesn't exclude technical divers. A technical diver wanting a recreational holiday dive can be an excellent customer. Someone specifically searching for a technical op- eration, however, isn't a customer I need to spend marketing resources trying to acquire. Another operator may have invested heavily in that market and should absolutely design demand around it. The same principle applies to smaller decisions. During my first season, I enthusiastically promoted local transfers. Customers liked them, but they also turned the person preparing equipment, teaching courses and running the
business into a morning shuttle service. We can still help when somebody genuinely needs transport, but I no longer deliberately create demand around it. There is no universal correct answer. Marketing should create more demand for the strengths and services we have intentionally built into our own operations. Give customers evidence: Designing demand can also reach people who might otherwise never become customers. Many people perfectly capable of learning to dive may still feel uncomfortable walking into an unfamiliar dive shop and asking strangers to teach them a completely unfamiliar skill. They may wonder whether they are too nervous, whether they are too old, whether their child will be comfortable or simply whether people like them belong there. Our digital presence can answer some of those questions before we know they were asked. This is why I am suspicious of marketing adjectives. “Ex- perienced instructors,” “professional service,” “personal attention” and “family friendly” tell customers what we want them to believe. Training backgrounds, years in the industry, student numbers, genuine reviews, real photographs and previous customer experiences allow them to decide for themselves. I was reminded of this while reviewing another operator's website. Our own website described our diving as taking place in “small groups.” The other operator stated “3–4 divers.” Their communication was better. I know what “small” means because I run my operation. A customer doesn't. “Small” is marketing language; “3–4” is informa- tion. Why are they still asking? My first attempt to reclaim time focused on answering enquiries faster. The rapid devel- opment of generative AI made automated replies an obvious experiment, but I disliked how easily efficiency became generic and impersonal. I moved instead to personalized AI- assisted replies. The communication improved and I typed less, but I was still providing context, checking answers, cus- tomizing them and sending them. Eventually I noticed something more important than the technology: the questions were predictable. Is equipment in- cluded? Can my child dive? Which program should I choose? I haven't dived recently; what should I book? How long does 43 | SCUBA DIVING INDUSTRY
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