An Interview with Tim Wells

We've been lucky enough to have an accommodation expert try out our new Build With Us service, and this is what he had to say about his experience...

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Thank you for taking the time to take part in our interview! 

You have over 30 years of marketing experience, and worked in the holiday industry since 2006...how important do you think it is for accommodation providers to have their own website?

Tim: Having your own website is a great way to ‘bring your holidays to life’ for potential guests. It gives you control over what visitors see about your holidays and your chance to impress. Nowadays, well over 90% of holidays are searched for online, with an average of 20 or so websites viewed. You need to have a good online presence and one they can book direct with you. But do not stop there as your business website needs to engage, resonate and bring your holidays to life in front of their eyes.

Our Build With Us Service provides our customers with a specially designed layout customised to each individual's requirements - all the customer's pages are provided complete with placeholder images & text that are simply replaced with the owner's own wording and photos...you have recently completed two websites for two different clients of yours, using the new "Build With Us" service. What would you say to accommodation owners who were thinking of taking up this service for their own website? Would you recommend it?

Tim: I would definitely would recommend this ‘Build With us’ service. It is incredibly easy to do and enjoyable to see the website come to life in front of you. I liked that you can easily manage, view and amend your own content. Trial and error meant that it could be edited with ease but if any issue arose friendly professional support was right behind me. I wish I knew about this web design approach earlier.

We were very impressed with the content you provided for your customer's websites. You provided the perfect amount of text on both the accommodations themselves as well as area information. How easy did you find adding the text and images?

Tim: Incredibly straight forward for both static images or carousel image uploads. Just make sure your best photos are highlighted and look as good online as you hoped as some adjustment maybe required. Uploading text content could not have been easier.

Take a look at the two websites Tim has completed so far, using our new "Build With Us" service:

Hunters Moon Retreat

View Site

Nyhavn Lakeside Cottage

View Site

We provide our customers with short video tutorials to show how to do everything, did you find these easy to follow?

Tim: The whole process is actually intuitive. The video tutorials these were very handy and bespoke. It helped for some of the more behind the scene requirements and very good to refer back to later too. 

When working on previous clients' websites, how would you compare your past experiences to your recent experience using our "Build With Us" service? (Eg do you have any customers using a very outdated system that just makes you want to pull your hair out?!)

Tim: Working with old website designs can be very frustrating. I hate having to compromise on quality because the old design elements do not allow what you want to achieve resulting in a reduced customer experience which I hate and so does Google.

What advice would you have for any accommodation owners in this current crisis? Do you have any tips on how they should be marketing their accommodation? For example, would you agree that getting a new website would help them get more direct bookings?

Tim: My old favourite adage has always been to ‘view your website through the eyes of a potential customer’. You have maybe 10-20 seconds maximum to make a good impression, resonate and engage a potential customer. This can be done with great imagery, informative and compelling content, relevant advice and good reviews. By not doing this you will lose the potential customer from your website very quickly as they seek what they want elsewhere.

Other recommendations:

· Make sure you update your ‘Google My Business’ listing with a Covid-19 update, get new photos and update them.

· Update your guest reviews

· Check your web content throughout your website is fully up to date and fresh and also on any other referral websites too

This is an article a wrote a few weeks back too for other ideas

Top Tips to Improve Your Business During Lockdown

https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/

Quick View of Contents

1. Inspire Guests by Bringing Your Local Area to Life (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#inspire-guests-by-bringing)

2. Update & Refresh Your Photography (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#update-refresh-photography)

3. Update Your ‘Google My Business’ Listing (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#update-google-business)

4. Customer Reviews, Feedback Forms & Guest Books (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#customer-reviews)

5. Critique Your Own Website (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#critique-own-website)

6. ‘Up Our Game’ – Personalise Your Communication (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#up-our-game)

7. Customer Database – Refresh It & Use It (https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/7-self-isolation-ideas-to-improve-your-business/#customer-database)

Thank you so much for your time, we look forward to seeing you work your magic on your future clients' websites with our new Build With Us service! For more information on Tim and to see how he can help you, please visit his website: https://www.trwmarketingservices.co.uk/