Opinion - aviation websites

As a potential customer for both schools and planes, my view is that many aviation websites could be better at getting in business once a visitor has arrived at their website. Not enough thought has gone into the type of visitor likely to be arriving as well as what information they are going to be after.

Manufacturers

In brief, too many 'heroic' pictures on the page and not enough detail about the plane or engine, as well as being shy about pricing. It may be that with the technology the website user is currently using, it's just too hard to keep the prices up to date, so they don't. Technologies are available to make shopping baskets relatively easy to understand (we've demonstrated a simple one in our article on entry-level ecommerce - note that this can be driven by a database to make updating quick and efficient).

Let's face it, just one more sale would probably go a long way to covering the cost of a more focussed website.

Schools

There are two main objectives for a school's website: the first to get newcomers into private and commercial flying; the second to choose their school over all others. Too many sites assume that the visitor is already well versed in flying and this may well not be the case - particularly if they haven't grown up obsessed with aircraft since the age of 5.

Now a thought - what about mobile-friendly websites?

Far too many aviation websites don't render well on small screens and that's a missed opportunity. When aviators are out and about or down the pub with their mates, they may want to show them things on your website. If it's too small to be read, they will be obliged to go and find a website they can read on their phone or tablet.

We can help!

We understand websites, we understand the marketing job that websites have to do and we understand the technologies that make sophisticated websites work, and of course we understand aviation.

Just to be clear, we don't have to take over your website, we're quite happy just being consultants.

Even if you don't want to do anything now, we would highly recommend that you read some of our articles so that you are better placed when talking to any website agency or designer. If you want to ask a question or want a general topic elucidated in an article, just use the form below.