I’m disappointed in the website for The Arts Club Dubai.
It’s the Dubai outpost of the original The Arts Club in London which was founded in 1863.
And I should add: it’s the only international outpost.
So given the prestige of this exclusive social club, this is quite a big deal.
But let’s get down to business.
Why am I disappointed? I guess I just expected so much more. And I daresay, others would expect more too.
Now these are not mindless, baseless gripes. And I’ve not forgotten about the pandemic that provides some context. No, these are rather basic that anyone with a clue could spot and fix.
Let’s dig in:
“The Arts Club” is the official name. So it stands to reason that the Dubai version would be “The Arts Club Dubai”. And that it is, except, the homepage title says “Artsclub Dubai” (it actually says “Home – Artsclub Dubai”, another black mark in the book). It should really say “The Arts Club Dubai” – that’s it.
There’s a favicon! (small plus). But the logo file is named logo.jpg and the alt text is “Artsclub Dubai”. What should it be instead? Alt text: “The Arts Club Dubai logo” or “logo of The Arts Club Dubai” and the-arts-club-dubai-logo.jpg for the filename.
It’s just 1 solitary page. ONE. Now there’s nothing wrong with single page websites and the Dubai outpost is still new. But this could easily have been a multi-page site. It helps with relevancy and targeting – you get to optimise each page to the hilt and it helps with rankings.
PDFs for days! There’s a link to a Brochure dated April 2021. It’s a PDF so Google can read the contents but we’re in 2022 now and that too, 2 days into the 2nd month of the year. The content could and should just be pages on the site.
They’ve also got a Useful Information PDF and a 2022 Visiting Times PDF, which also should be! pages on the site.
The benefit? Being able to edit on the fly! These PDFs look pretty but would take far longer to update than if they were simply HTML pages on the site.
No one wants to pinch and zoom to get important details on their mobile either. Give them the information front and centre!
There’s an Arabic version! But you wouldn’t know it. It’s just not easily accessible by humans – I stumbled upon it when I looked at the code. And the meta data is not in Arabic either.
They’ve forgotten to customise the meta description. It’s running on WordPress and uses Yoast, so there’s no excuses for this oversight. Thankfully, Google pulls the page content into the meta description in the SERP:
But look at the code – no meta description entered – just the default OG and twitter descriptions which, needless to say, are not related to the club at all:
Theres mailto: links on the page despite the existence of a contact form. Having public mailto: links opens yourself up to being spammed. Use the form instead!
Interestingly, they’ve had the sense to run Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager. I guess that’s something?!
And lastly, to add insult to injury, the copyright notice in the footer is outdated. It still says 2019. That’s pre-pandemic.
The good news with all of the above problems is that it’s easy to fix.
Super, super easy.
But will The Arts Club Dubai take note and take action?
