The new Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre* web site looks visually ok, and it has some general text about the Centre. But all the useful information is only contained in downloadable PDFs. Why?
Aren’t web sites put up to convey information to people? To make it easy to find out about your product/service? Not to make people jump through hoops?
The one page of the site contains a spiel about the ITAC, that it cost $40 million, and an overview of the Aquatic and Health and Fitness facilities. The only empirical data is the opening hours, 6am-9pm Monday to Friday and 6am to 8pm on the weekend.
If you want to know prices you have to download a PDF. The PDF has a list of prices for Casual Entry, Multi Visit Passes and Memberships. But no explanation of the details like what a City of Sydney Aquatic Centre Concession Card is, what you get for Aquatic Membership, or how long it lasts. A page of prices and explanations would be nice.
There is a pop-up window that plays an exert from Channel Nine News about the Centre, but the window isn’t big enough to display the controls to pause or replay the footage. (For your convenience click here to get the controls.)
The only other page is a form to Become a Foundation Member. Lots of question, but no explanation about what a ‘Foundation Membership’ entails or how much it cost. “We will contact you shortly regarding your enquiry”.
I could go on about all the problems, but the above should convey the gist of it. And there really isn’t much to go on about. The Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre web site is really just one page. One page on the YMCA Sydney site.
The ITAC opening was delayed. Surely they could have done a better job of the web site while waiting for the Centre to be ready?
*The URL advertised for the ITAC is www.itac.org.au, but this is just a frameset page that holds the URL www.ymcasydney.org/itac.php