Sea Cave Inc.
A 900-page catalogue for an aquarium shop
Sea Cave has sold saltwater fish at 660 East 14th Street in Erie since 1975, and nothing leaves the building by post. The site had to work as a reference rather than a store, so a species page carries the phone number where a basket would be.
seacaveinc.com
Two catalogues
The shop keeps two lists. The catalogue is a reference for what is alive in its tanks, and the shop page is the hardware that carries prices.
Aisle tiles
One tile each for saltwater, freshwater, coral and invertebrates, one for all of them, and every tile carries its count.
In-store notice
One notice: sold in store, live animals never shipped, special orders taken, and the number to call.
Call button
A species page carries no basket. The button in the buy slot is the shop’s phone number.
Every tile carries its count
Sold in store only
Call, not add to cart
One species
Every species the shop keeps has a page. Each is built to answer what would otherwise have to be asked out loud at the counter.
Care grid
This one grid holds care level, temperament, community, adult size, minimum tank, diet and the scientific name.
Adult-size card
Sixteen species outgrow the tank they are bought for, and only those pages carry the juvenile gallons beside the adult gallons.
Tankmate card
A tankmate the shop keeps gets its photograph, a link to its own page, and a paragraph on why the pairing works.
Care at a glance
Juvenile and adult gallons
A pairing, with the reason
Builds
Eight of the guides walk a whole tank build. Each of those ends in a parts list, priced off the shop's own shelves.
Water-and-size chip
One chip gives the water type and the tank size the build was written for.
Parts-list row
A row holds the photograph, the part, its price, one line on the job it does, and the link to the product.
Estimated price
An unconfirmed price carries a tilde and the word estimate, beside the part it belongs to and the line explaining it.
Water type and tank size
Part, price, and why
Marked as an estimate
Servicing
Servicing and coral farming have a page of their own. Numbered blocks rather than one long paragraph, so each service can be read and left on its own.
Service photograph
Each photograph is one of the shop's own display tanks in Erie.
What a visit covers
Saltwater, freshwater and office tanks, the visit plans, repairs and emergency call-outs each get a line of their own.
Enquire button
The same phone number closes each service, so nobody has to scroll back up to find it.
The shop's own tank
What the service covers
Every block ends here
Day to day
Sea Cave edits the site itself. Every screen in the editor is named for a job the shop already does, and the whole of it fits a phone.
Task card
The front page is a stack of these. Each is named for the job, and the line under it says when to reach for it.
Product card
Photo, name, price and the switch that takes it off the site. Anything that sells out goes off in one tap.
Second-look rows
The editor checks its own catalogue. Anything live without a photo or without a price is listed here, so nobody goes looking for it.
Named for the job
Off the site in one tap
The site checks itself
Impact
The shop edits all of it. Catalogue, shop page, guides and services. Fifty years in, this is the first website Sea Cave has ever had.
900
Pages, one per species and product
~25,000
Google search impressions a month
0
Baskets on a species page, by design
Impressions measured in Search Console across full months, July–August 2026. Page count is 728 products plus 172 species pages, read off the sitemap; the catalogue index lists 156 of them.
Learnings
Split the catalogue
Separating what the shop can order from what is in the building ended the calls that opened with disappointment.
Servicing is the recurring money
Servicing was less fun to design than a wall of species photographs, and it is where the recurring money comes from.
Label the estimate
A price the shop cannot stand behind is marked rather than dropped, which keeps the rest of the list believable.
MORE WORK