Get More DIRECT Bookings
Discover why our websites WORK so well AND CONVERT LOOKERS INTO BOOKERS!
Dear Accommodation Owner
Let us ask you the following questions...
- Do you want a website that will get you MORE DIRECT Bookings?
- Do you want a website system that is amazingly easy to update, so you'll always have a website that is visibly up to date, and increases trust?
- Do you want a website that will help GROW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA, IMPROVE YOUR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMSATION and MAKE YOUR ACCOMMODATION LOOK AMAZING ONLINE?
If you answered 'Yes' to any of the above questions, we have good news for you - our websites can do all of these, and won't break the bank!
The secret to GETTING YOU DIRECT BOOKINGS!
We are going to reveal to you the magic formula that we use to make our websites work for our customers...
But first, please let us introduce ourselves...
Web Design For Accommodation is one of the UK's most popular web design agency that specialises in (you guessed it!) accommodation websites!
We have over 400 customers, and we have been creating websites for accommodation owners for nearly 10 years. Some of our customers are on their 2nd or 3rd website with us - customer satisfaction equals customer retention, so we do everything we can to ensure our customers stay happy throughout their time with us.
Our main aim when we started working with accommodation owners was to provide a service that would allow owners to update their own websites themselves. At that time, it was really common that before coming to us, our owners were spending a lot of money getting their websites updated for them by their web designer...the result being that their websites were not updated as regularly as they would have liked. Old photos and text were left unchanged, and their websites weren't helping them to get direct bookings.
We wanted to give our website owners the freedom to allow them to update their sites whenever they wanted. Over the years we have refined our service and now, we believe we have the ultimate accommodation website system, which is ridiculously easy to update, without any fear of 'mucking up' the page layout!
So now that you know us a little better, it's time to share our CONVERTING SECRETS with you.
Our system works because of 3 powerful secrets.
We'd like to take you 'behind the scenes' and show you each of these secrets in action. When we reveal how the system works, we're sure you'll agree that it's a fantastic system for an Accommodation Website...
3 Essential Secrets To Make Your Website INCREASE DIRECT BOOKINGS...
Get Direct Bookings from being seen on OTAs eg Airbnb...
When we speak to a new customer (who is already using an OTA such as Airbnb/Booking.com) we always ask if they get many direct bookings as a result of being seen initially on the big booking site. If the answer is 'no', we often find that the reason is due to a few simple errors...
Error No.1: To get direct bookings as a result of your accommodation being first seen on a booking site, then you need to make sure that your property's name is predominantly used throughout your OTA listing; ideally at the start of each paragraph, and also make sure to include the town name - this will make it really easy for someone to "google" for your website; eg "Sea-Renity in Sidmouth..." - you can easily see that having this text in the listing will make it highly likely to be used as the search phrase to Google for Sea-Renity's site in Sidmouth (which, if you check, comes up first, even above it's listing on Airbnb!). Whereas, if you don't include your accommodation name at all throughout the listing you have ZERO chance of someone finding your own website!
Error No. 2: If you have an apartment and the apartment block has more than a few holiday lets within it, how can you ensure that your own website can be found instead of the other owners' sites? If you only have a number and not a name for your apartment, create a name for it! Then follow the same advice as Error No. 1!
Error No. 3: Let's imagine you do get a lot of people finding your website as a result of being seen on somewhere like Airbnb, and they land up on your website, ask yourself - does your website makes it OBVIOUS that it's better for them to book directly with you... Your site should literally have the wording "Book Direct for best Prices". As Airbnb adds such a large booking fee to the guest, even if you display exactly the same nightly rates on your own website, your potential guest will still be better off to book directly with you, as it will save them £££s in booking fees.
You'll see (further down) what else we do to ensure you get these direct bookings!
Get Out There on Social Media!
We know how hard accommodation owners work, especially during peak season when you have even less time!
It's really common for us to hear from new customers that they are "on" social media, but don't really do much with it. Sometimes it's because they're not sure what is the right thing to do, but more often it's due to a lack of time.
In fact, some owners that may be really good normally at posting regularly on their Facebook and Instagram may totally disappear during peak seasons.
The result? Getting removed from many of their follower's feeds, as the algorithm used by these sites adapt, and will often show posts that are interacted with, so by the time you get back to posting again, you aren't being seen by as many people as you were before you stopped!
Further down, you'll find out how our websites solve this problem!
Get your website to be a MARKETING MACHINE!
That sounds dramatic, but actually, your website SHOULD be a marketing machine, that allows you to gain social followers, build up an e-marketing mailing list, allow your site visitors to book directly easily, and of course, showcase your accommodation to it's absolute best.
If your website doesn't do this, think about how many more bookings you can get by having a website that will allow you to do all this, which in turn will make you more in control over your bookings, and LESS DEPENDENT on OTAs such as Airbnb and Booking.com.
Find our (further down) how we have helped our customers gain these great tools!
Creating A Powerful Accommodation Website...
To create a website system that can convert lookers into bookers, we utilise 3 powerful areas. These make it possible utilise the hundreds if not thousands of people who may see your property on one of the large booking sites each week, but also as a standalone service that will make your website into a marketing marvel.
1. Adding Functionality To Your Website
There are many great services that accommodation owners can and should use, (many being completely free of charge), that will make a big difference to their marketing.
One of these is Mailchimp (or similar) - which is a free (up to 2000 contacts) email service. If you have a mailing list of past or potential guests, and you wish to grow that list then you should be using this service. Did you know that if you try and send out a bulk email (sending an email to a large group at once) that you are likely to get blacklisted by your internet provider if you sent it from your own email service? For one thing, your email is not likely to reach the recipients, and if you end up blacklisting your main email address it could impact any emails you send thereafter.
So using an email marketing service makes a lot of sense, particularly as email marketing still is one of the best and most effective form of marketing there is.
We help our customers build up their email marketing list, by adding a newsletter sign-up area to their website (normally in the footer area) which will make it really easy for site visitors to be able to add themselves.
Our new Mobile Action Bar also offers great functionality - on Mobile View there are 3 buttons on view at all times, providing the ability to Call, Book or Email - see it in action on this website: Visit Website
This Mobile Action Bar makes it really easy for mobile users to get in touch or book.
We also provide off-site functionality - one of these is providing a free-of-charge online guestpack for our guests.
Building trust...integrating a great way to display your best (and verified) reviews on your website is another great bit of functionality that we can assist with. Repuso is a 3rd party (paid-for service) that is highly recommended as it allows you to display your best reviews whilst clearly showing these reviews to be genuine.
2. Grow your website, Provide Content for Social Accounts + Improve Website SEO
This is a big one. It sounds like a dream doesn't it? For one system to grow your website, provide social content and improve your website's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) all in one go?
Well, it's a dream that can become a reality for you!
When we realised how many owners drop off the radar over the high season months, we decided to provide them with a system that would allow owners to spend just 5 minutes a week to combat this problem.
We created a system that we liken to Instagram, but it's just for your own website.
It's photo-based, so no need to spend hours typing out a lengthy post, and the beauty of it is as follows:
People love seeing other people's photos - which is why Instagram is so popular. Displaying great photos as a photo blog on your site, along with a little caption provides interest for your site visitors and increases your site interaction. These photo posts can be of anything interesting local to the accommodation; eg photos taken during a lovely meal out, or of a walk, perhaps a lovely photo of wildlife or farm animals, eg sheep or lambs, or something nice in the property itself, perhaps new furnishings, or garden photos etc.
Saving You Time: Each photo post can get auto-posted to your Facebook so saves you from needing to add any social posts directly on your Facebook page.
Improve your website SEO: Best of all, as each photo post essentially becomes a website page, over the course of a year you could easily have added 50 new website pages to your website. Google and other search engines love new content being added, so the more you post, the better for your website's SEO!
3. A website that looks amazing and compels guests to book
Having created so many accommodation websites, we know what makes a good website for both owners and for their site visitors.
You know what it's like yourself, if you visit a poorly constructed, or hard-to-navigate website, it is not only frustrating but makes you wonder if the service that the website is providing is also not quite up to scratch...
Our websites all provide or offer the following:
- Stylish, easy to navigate, professionally designed websites, each one created with the owner's niches and selling points displayed to their best advantage.
- Provide Call-To-Actions throughout, these are buttons, or areas throughout each website page, that encourage your site visitor to do something such as enquire, book or check availability.
- Provide all the functionality you need to get direct bookings. We recommend owners to include a booking system (not part of our website service) that we can integrate into your website, allowing your site visitors to book online easily - and if you don't currently use a booking system we can discuss which ones would work for you. If you don't want to use a booking system for whatever reason, we can include a free stylish calendar for each property, and an enquiry form.
- Ensure that your site has great on-site Search Engine Optimisation; we will make sure your best niches are included to enable your site to get found for these.
- Allow the ability to find out more about your website visitors. Adding analytics to your site will allow you to see the journey your website visitors take throughout your website.
- Our sites have one of the easiest editing systems ever seen! Never again will you feel "it's too much" to edit your website text and photos! Take a look here at just how easy it is: Click here
- Save you time and energy with our Photo Blog Posts functionality (like Instagram for your website)
- Mobile/Tablet design - so many websites are designed to look great on desktop/laptops but fail to impress on smartphones and tablets. We design our websites to be "Mobile First" - which means our websites not only work brilliant on mobiles and tablets, but look amazing too!
- "Join the club" - becoming one of our customers allows you to join our exclusive "club" - we allow all our customers to get a brand new website at anytime, at just 50% of the cost of a new site, which means you'll never need to spend a lot to keep your website fresh and lovely. In addition, we have a new Facebook group for our owners, as well as our Knowledge Base website where we answer any question posed by our owners (and it can be on anything online, not just about websites) that you want help with, such as social media marketing etc.
What A Review!
We don't want you to take just our word for it! Here is what one of our owners took the time to say recently:
WDFA Provide Beautiful Designs and Exemplary Service
“We have just upgraded our original website which Web Design for Accommodation first created for us four years ago. The original website has attracted a lot of positive feedback from our guests and has functioned perfectly throughout this time.
Our new website is fresher with an amazingly easy to use editor. Within one day of our site being live I edited text, uploaded and inserted a new image and changed prices on what was previously a complicated table. It took a few minutes. One click on ‘Save’ and it is live – wonderful.
The WDFA team is a highly talented and conscientious group of Web Developers. The communication and service is flawless. We have absolute faith in this very helpful company. When I have been unsure how to make changes to my website they have advised me how to achieve the desired results, providing clear instructions and even sending me links to videos which demonstrate the process. I do not know of any other company that would do this. Some simple global changes they have made for me. I always have the feeling that they want the best for us; like a friend with great knowledge and skill.
The aspects we like best include: a unique and modern website which is easy to navigate with a harmonious and subtle colour palette.
All the images are properly composed and formatted so that one click expands them into a large and still beautiful picture.
Our linked email service sends our completed Enquiry Form and normal enquiries to us straight from the website and also handles the rest of our emails.
The new Extras include a Photo Blog; just upload an image and give it a caption. A simple way to update your web content and hold the attention of visitors.
We are absolutely delighted.”
We hope you're beginning to see the power of having a website that works for you, and can immediately start to increase your direct booking potential. It's completely available to you, and can be up and running within 2 weeks.
We imagine that by now you have some questions... here are answers to the questions that we think most people will have. If we don't answer your question here then please email us at admin@webdfa.co.uk
Being on any of the large booking sites such as Airbnb or Booking.com will allow you to get your property seen by potentially thousands of people each week. If you imagine that of these thousands, some will like the look of your property and of these, you will find that quite a few will "Google" your property to find the owner's website, as the majority of people know that going direct is likely to save them money.
But if you're not on a big booking site, it's still possible to get direct bookings, you just may need to work a bit harder in other areas such as building up an email marketing list and growing your social media audience.
If your website has been online for over 5 years, you will have built up some online presence, and this will make it more likely that when we do your on-site SEO that your site will start to appear for more search phrases, this will bring in organic traffic to your website, however it's unlikely to ever come up for any competitive phrases such as "holiday cottage + (your area)" as these are always taken up by the large agencies and booking sites, who may spend thousands of pounds a month to ensure that they get prime ranking results.
The answer in a nutshell is: If your website looks great and you've also made it clear that booking direct is beneficial to your guests, then you will get direct bookings, but you will need to work harder on getting traffic to it if you're not listed on any large sites.
The Most Important Question Of All...
"How Much Does It Cost?"
Our "No Work" Standard Website Service costs just £1,079.99 (£899.99+VAT), and then £16.79 (£13.99+VAT) per month thereafter (see our pricing info here)
To get your own new Marketing Machine Accommodation Website simply click on the order link below. We'll start processing your order, and we'll be in touch with the next steps.
Click on the order link below to get started now...