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Explore a detailed review of 3 swim club websites to uncover smart design choices, common pitfalls, and actionable ideas for your own site.
Swim club websites play a key role in keeping members informed and new families engaged. If you're managing a swim club website, knowing what works and what doesn’t can make a huge difference.
In this article, we review the sites for Mantua Swim and Tennis Club, Occoquan Swimming, and Lakeview Swim Club, covering key areas like button styles, visual clarity, content layout, and effective calls to action. Whether you're updating your current site or building from scratch, there's something to learn from each one.
Mantua Swim and Tennis Club’s homepage features a typical navigation menu at the top but also includes a secondary navigation bar underneath with a Member Sign In link and a group of emojis.
You’ll often see certain icons used as buttons for familiar actions such as a magnifying glass for search, a hamburger menu for expanding a menu, or a shopping cart for viewing your shopping items. However, it’s not clear in this case what each one of these emojis does.
On desktop screens, you need to hover over the emoji and wait for the tooltip to reveal what page it’s linking to.
On mobile screens, there’s no indication at all. What does the swimmer emoji mean? Same with the racket one? What’s the difference between the two people emojis? The ambiguity discourages visitors from clicking on these links and worse yet can lead to frustration if they were to click and subsequently visit a page they didn’t want to visit.
Furthermore, the touch target size is too small. The Web Accessibility Initiative recommends a minimum of 44x44px for a touch target in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Anything smaller than this is difficult to interact with. These emojis are around 25x25px which can lead to mistakenly clicking on the wrong one.
If you plan to use emojis for your links, then use them in tandem with text descriptions. Avoid using emojis as standalone links, as they lack the clarity and familiarity of standard icons, which can confuse users.
The flow through the homepage makes a lot of sense. You have a prominent call-to-action in the header section to learn about memberships. This is followed by an about section, events and announcements, another call-to-action to visit their membership page, and lastly a map with information on where to find and how to contact them.
You can think of your homepage as telling a story. Put yourself in a visitor’s shoes and think of how you want to order your talking points and present the most compelling case. The flow on this site is good, but the content visibility could be improved.
Here you have to scroll to view all upcoming events. Typically you want to avoid having double scrollbars on your website. There are 10 events going a couple months into the future. This section is titled “Upcoming Events” so it’s perfectly reasonable to restrict it to showing only the next 3 events and then having a link to view the full calendar.
There’s also a large empty space to the right and a small link that says “A Twitter List by MSTCPresident.” This is a link to their Twitter page but it’d be better if you could actually see the posts instead of having to leave the site to view them.
It’s important to lay out all the important information and not to keep users having to search for or guess where to find it.
Occoquan Swimming’s homepage is clean and communicates the essentials.
One key area for improvement is differentiating button styles to reflect their importance. In effective web design, buttons are styled based on the action’s priority:
This hierarchy helps users intuitively understand where to click and what matters most.
This homepage contains 11 different primary buttons, ranging from “Register Now” to “Facebook.” Having too many primary buttons competes for attention and dilutes a visitor’s perception of what’s most important.
The buttons in this section could be a bit more thoughtfully designed. They’re pretty large and could easily sit side-by-side without feeling cramped. More importantly, each of the subsections contains a button labeled “Register,” but each one leads somewhere different which makes it unclear whether there’s one sign-up form or several. Adding specific labels like “Register for Swim Lessons” or “Join the Competitive Team” would make things easier to understand at a glance and help users navigate with confidence.
Another recommendation is to skip using full-sized buttons for social media links since these are commonly just shown as icons. A cleaner layout would be to display the photos in a gallery-style format with the social media icons placed neatly underneath.
I think the images on Occoquan Swimming’s site are fantastic. The header photo shown earlier with the smiling group of kids is welcoming and authentic. Also, the many action shots give the site great energy and momentum.
In addition to the ones already shown, even on secondary pages they continue to use good action photography.
Strong visuals like these showcase what the organization does best. For recreation-focused businesses, using dynamic photography is key to conveying energy and enthusiasm.
If you take a look at Lakeview Swim Club’s homepage, you’ll find that all of the text on the page is around the same size.
From the headings to the body text, there isn’t much visual contrast in font size or style. Even within the paragraph text, multiple sizes and weights are used inconsistently.
This lack of structure makes it hard for users to follow the content. It’s unclear where one section ends and another begins, and it also limits your ability to guide the visitor’s attention with bold, eye-catching headings.
Oftentimes images can be used strategically to break up long stretches of text and signal a shift in content. Also, when paired with a headline or call-to-action, a photo can reinforce the message.
For the first content section, by adding a large heading like “Opening Weekend Coming Soon!” with an accompanying picture of a group of smiling kids in goggles and swim gear, you can draw more attention to this announcement.
For the subsequent about section, using a simple heading such as “Who We Are” will signal to visitors that they’re about to learn more about the club. Alternatively, you could use a stronger heading like “A Tradition of Excellence” too add emphasis and pride. There's lots of space to the side to include an image of the Marlins swim and dive teams in action or a community gathering photo, and either of these would pair well with the heading.
People have a tendency to scan websites and not read every word, so headings act as signposts to guide readers.
There are various instances on the homepage where Lakeview Swim Club encourages the visitor to take some form of action, but then it’s unclear how or where to do so.
Here are some questions that instantly come to mind: Where can I sign up? Is signing up the same as membership? Am I signing up for lessons, for the swim and dive team, or for a membership at the club? Adding a “Sign Up” button right there with some accompanying description avoids any confusion or the user having to search for the answer.
There are three quick improvements here:
A great swim club website guides visitors clearly, showcases the club’s energy, and helps members find what they need without frustration. From clear button styles to strong visual hierarchy and purposeful images, small design layout choices can make a big impact on how your site is experienced.
If you're a business owner looking to refine your website this year, please fill out the contact form and mention that you'd like a website review in the project description. I'll personally evaluate your site and provide a consultation with tailored feedback and a plan of action.
