The first step is to know what your goal is!
Why do you want to creat a website for your vacation rental?
This may seem
to be a stupid question, though many times people who market their vacation
rentals online forget the reason they have a website. What this means, is that
instead of focusing on what a potential client wants to find, the vacation
rental owner creates a site that is more a work of art than a marketing tool.
Big Mistake!!
WEBSITE DESIGN IMPORTANT POINT
Your goal is to have a website that gets you
inquiries that can be turned into reservations. Nothing else!
Most visitors to your site will be asking themselves these questions: 1. Does this look like a place I want to spend my vacation? 2. Is it in the right location 3. What are the rates? 4. Can I trust the owner? Therefore, you have to: 1. Show GREAT photos |
 |
Remember:
You have less than a second with your website to make a
great
impression.
This means:
1. Your site needs to LOAD FAST
2. You have to have GREAT PHOTOS - you need to show your best photo first and have it large enough to capture your visitors imagination.
3. Your text needs to be clearly presented. Keep It Simple. Visitors to your site are looking for specific information. They do not want to read a novel.
4. Easy Navigation - make it EASY for a visitor to contact you, find rates, look at more photos, find out more about the area.
5. Call to Action - throughout your pages you have to include a button or link that gives the visitors an option of Contacting You. This can be either a phone number, a link to a form or an email address. There are far too many websites that make you search to contact the owner. When a visitor is ready to contact you they do not want to look around to figure out how to.
BASIC RULES TO DESIGNING YOUR WEBSITE
1. GREAT PHOTOS &
2., FAST LOADING PAGES
3. MAKE IT EASY FOR A RENTER TO CONTACT YOU
remember : Your goal is to have a website that gets you inquiries that can be turned into reservations.
You may be wondering who I am to be giving this sort of advice.
Well, I have NEVER owned a vacation rental. However I created and ran a vacation
rental listing site that to this day ranks in the top 10 for many of the
most important key words related to vacation rentals and using this site
I generated millions of $s of vacation rental reservations. I know the internet
and how to market online. I don't know much about closing reservations. I
assume that since you are in the business of owning a vacation
rental that you are able to show people that you really care about them having
a great time in your vacation home and that you are their to provide a valuable
service. My goal is to get your more reservations. I recently sold the
listing site, however love helping owners get more reservations. I am in
the process of developing a new vacation rental listing site. Until then,
my goal is to use this site to share insights with vacation rental owners
on how to effectively utilize the internet to increase your reservations.
THIS WEB SITE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE MUCH!!
The goal of this site is to share information on how to use the internet to market your vacation rentals. I may at some point have a designer create a pretty interface.
At this point however, my primary goal is to share what Ive learned about marketing a vacation rental online.