New website (thanks to all of you!)

Original post that started the thread, back in March (before the changes):

OK, it's time.

We've been spending oodles of $$ on PPC and other online adverts, and getting plenty of traffic to our site.

And we get decent conversion, considering how many people are just "shopping".

We track the actual bookings, not just the click-throughs-- so we have a better idea of which sites/places give us the most bang for the buck.

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But here's the thing:

We've just opened a SECOND B&B.

And we don't want to double our advertisting budget, so we'd like to have a "transition" website-- one that presents BOTH B&Bs on the same "go to" page.

The 2 B&Bs are different-- so we can try to figure out some way to attract different kinds of folks to each place.

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MORE INFO:

I'm a big fan of "Don't Make Me Think!" -- and I think that most folks who come to our site are looking for:

#1 Availability and pricing (what rooms avail, on specific dates, for what price)

#2 What we offer for that $$ (our rooms, amenities, food, etc).

#3 What it's like to stay w/us (the overall experience)

#4 Our location (relative to nearby restaurants, wineries, and other attractions).

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Y'know what, though? These are the things *I* think are important. I could be way off on this. Input?

Other stuff:

-If you're NOT a B&B person, I don't want you to stay here and be disappointed. So having a really nice way to communicate that would be cool. We *do* have a ton of first time B&B folks stay w/us (more than 1000 each year), but they know what they're getting into.

-Our MO is to under-promise and over-deliver. So we've had a clunky website for years. Folks book not expecting what they find--or should I say, their expectations are more in line with reality, and not some over-romanticized website presenting a "dream version" of our Inn (too many inns make this mistake, IMO).

-Let me rephrase what I just said: We want people's expectations to be in line w/reality. We find this to be one of our most powerful and effective sales tools. If you call us and ask us how big a room is, we'll tell you it's tiny (we actually use that word, not "cozy"). We want your expectations to be LESS, and for you to be BLOWN AWAY by the experience. This makes for happy guests, GREAT referrals, and return guests.

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I'm considering having a design competition on 99designs (thanks PEERless for this site!).

And I'd be very, very appreciative of feedback/input here.

I'll add to this post (or thread) as I think of things.

Oh, almost forgot: Current website is: Napa Valley Bed and Breakfast Inn, Old World Inn - Romantic Lodging

Thanks in advance!

-Russ H.

Not sure if I should post one of the ideas/layouts for a re-do? Or will that bias the replies?

Let me know.

-Russ H.

PS All feedback is encouraged-- you don't have to be a web designer or world traveler!

I know you mention creating a new site for both properties..but here are some suggestions based on your current site that perhaps you can implement with the transition site..?

I am affiliated with a property management company in florida and three things that I'd suggest..

1. In your directions, include an interactive map (google maps or whatever).. include not only your b&b's but area attractions, restaurants, etc I know you have maps but people really seem to like the interactive maps.

2. I see that you have some quotes from previous guests..but in my experience customer reviews will dramatically increase bookings..perhaps you can have a whole page dedicated to customer reviews..My experience is flipkey.com and products are extremely effective. Might want to see if that site or others fit into your strategy.

3. From a design perspective you may want to consider widening your site. Most of my visitors are surfing in at least 1024x768 and with your page I see a lot of the brown background. This way, you'll be able to get more of the critical "above the page".

Just a few thoughts...

Russ ~ I actually like the site, for the most part. Nice testimonials and pictures really give the feel of the place. Graphically, I think it's nice and like the rich,warm old-world colors, altho I might use more gradiation (or shadowing or such). The only thing that I tried to find/do that I couldn't were: pics of the outside (even if you don't have a lovely garden or courtyard, at least show some pics of the Napa countryside. That is, after all, why people come there, right?). The other thing I found myself doing was trying to click on the smaller pictures to see larger versions. None of them blew up for me. They were all just practically thumbnails.

I know you weren't really asking for graphic marketing advice, but those were the things that stuck out to me.

I love how you've incorporated your love of AV into the guest experience as well. I, for one, would love to retire in the evening with a lovely glass of wine, some chocolate or cheese, and an old movie on the big screen! Nice.

In fact, I think we may have to come see you!!!!

Oh, to our original post, I think you could easily put all properties on one site. You have enough of a track record, that you might as well leverage your credibility in the market.

santiago-

many thanks. I'm pretty ignorant of flipkey, so I'll look into it. The "redesign" I mention in my second post actually has a review as an integral part of its design (as the photos change, the review progresses). And we keep the website optimized for 800x600 b/c we get a LOT of mid-america AOL and non-techie users, so having this is advantageous (being the "Old World Inn", we don't necessarily want to lose the low tech folks!)

Jill-

Thanks for your kind words. The "redo" idea still incorporates these colors (which are, by no accident, used throughout the house). We figure if folks like the website color palette, they'll like the house.

There's a really good reason we don't have beautiful views of the Napa Valley-- it's 'cause when you stay here, you see parking lots out of our windows, not beautiful gardens (or miles/acres of vines). So we don't want someone to look at a gorgeous photo of vineyards, and think that's what they'll see from their room!!! (note: We actually had a pic on the site once, and had it labeled "Napa Valley view-- not from our house!"-- and we STILL got folks staying w/us that complained that they thought it was the view from our house!!). I don't make this stuff up-- weird, but true.

Good idea on the room pix-- I've been trying to figure out how to do this w/out making the site cumbersome. We've streamlined things enough so that folks can get through the whole site without getting bored and going to bed-- we want them to book, not look! Not sure if that makes any sense . . there is kind of a window of time that we want people to hit our site, look at what's there, and make a decision. We don't want to give them too much. We are considering putting 360º tours of each room on our site-- I have the lens for this, and it might communicate the size of the space well. We've also considered putting in floorplans of each room-- but not sure if this would help, or hurt (as I mentioned, our rooms are TINY!).

Thanks both for your feedback-- please don't hesitate to add more if you think of it!

-Russ H.

Idea-- we could post photos of close-ups of some of our outdoor stuff, like the wine barrel fountain, or the firepit w/people around it (*very* popular in the warmer months, for gathering after dinner).

These wouldn't be grapey views, but would be truthful, intimate photos-- and would convey some of the feeling of our house.

Or would we just post a few pics on a separate page, label them as "XXXXXX Winery, 5 miles from our house", etc?

-Russ

What I look for at such sites:

1) Pictures of the rooms, check-in area etc.
2) Price.

I don't really check the other stuff.

Russ,

When is the last time you checked your stats to see how many users are 800x600? My online store was initially 800x600 and I left it that way for a year because I had about 33% visitors at 800x600 since I have many "rural" customers. However, I looked at my stats again last month and 800x600 was down to 7%, so I changed my site to 1024x768.

It's funny you say that - we had the same problem a home near the beach, we showed a picture of the beach and a guest called us on their 7th day of a week stay saying that they were dissapointed because they thought the house was directly on the beach..to make matters worse they did a chargeback with amex and won (if you have experience with amex and chargebacks you know it is difficult to win as a merchant).

Back on topic..I agree with the thumbnails, I did the exact same thing.

Overall, I like the site and like Jill - I may visit with my wife in the near future!

This is great advice.


Russ, the question about one site or two really depends on how you are branding them... are both the same thing? or each B&B caters to a completely diff. target market?

This should be guide for making a decision.

If they are separate entities in your customers' minds then brand them differently.

Based on your comments, it seems you want to make them part of the same family, so how could I decide which room to reserve? Are going to be major price differences between the rooms in one or the other? If so then you have some risk by putting them under the same web roof.



About the old world inn site, I'd highlight your location even more... I did not see a map where I could see where the B&B is located in relation to how close all the other nice places are... just a plain map of the area, but not highlights of each other location, for example, restaurants, wineries, attractions. Make it BIG and VISUAL.

Also, the call to action (CTA) is too subtle and disappears because it has pretty much the same font and background. Make sure it is clearly defined so people know what to DO in your site (the gift certificates and reservations are "just" more text). do you want them to reserve? or just inform them about your place?

I noticed the site is branded as Romantic Lodging, but I did not get a feeling of romantic when visiting the site.

Since you are going by what *you* think your customers want, it would be dangerous to proceed without further market research.

With adwords and a service like clicktale, you can setup some tests where you can begin to understand what people are really interested in or what they are expecting when, for example:

• they see pictures of each B&B
  
• or you use certain words to describe them
  
• their primary reason for staying at a B&B

I have a video course that shows you how to do this type of market segmentation research without your survey subjects realizing they are being surveyed (that way you know they are being more honest in their answers). PM me for the link.

Forgot to mention that the market segmentation video that I mentioned is a video course and costs $47. I may have a way to pick it up at a discount if you are interested you can PM me.

If you don't want to spend $47 on it, the gist of it is a way of using this analytic tool to learn about your sites visitors: ClickTale | Screencasts

The course explains it very well, but you can learn a lot just by using clicktale and learning from the information on their site.

Sorry for any confusion

Been a nutty busy day-- thanks to all, will get on later tonight and catch up!

In the meantime-- great ideas-- thank you!!!

-Russ H.

I am not big into website design but the one thing I don't like about any website is when you click a link and it opens in a new tab or window. I usually have at least 3 tabs open at all times when I surf. When a link opens a new tab or window I begin to get lost.

That definitely is very annoying if the link is going to a page in the same website. I don't mind a link opening a new tab if the link is going to a different website.

Jon Lee- Clicktale sounds very interesting. I'll PM you about it.

-Our guests/demographic are EXACTLY what we want-- tons of people who love what they find. We are very, very nervous about changing anything on the website, for fear of losing what works (by accident).

Andviv- We are doing this site just as a transition until we build the numbers up. Advertising 2 B&Bs would cost 2x as much-- so we're going to increase our ad expenditures for just one site-- but have BOTH B&Bs on the landing page. Make sense? Over time, as bookings/occupancy increase, we will develop a separate identity (and unique site) for the 2nd B&B-- and the 1st B&B's site will also change at that time, going back to talking about just the one B&B. That's the plan, anyway . . .

-I know what you mean about lack of romance. We tried this a few years ago. The more romantic we did the layouts and shots, the more some guests would complain. Apparently, when we do a very logical/rational site, we appeal to that part of a person's psyche. But when we had wonderful images and wording about the experience-- we had some folks who kept on dreaming, and apparently wound up w/expectations that were totally out of line w/what we were offering.

Still would like to goose up the "romance factor" of the site-- but want to do it without setting expectations too high.

Suggestions? Ideas?

rcardin- If you stay on the one server, it opens in the same window. As you go to other servers (to the reservation server, and to the Netsol server) for the online bookings and specials pages, separate windows open. That's to give you more reliability in case one of the servers acts wonky. And the max you can have open when visiting our site is 3 (our webstats indicate that most folks never get to that).

-Bio (and others)- I will check our current webstats and see what the percentages of resolutions are-- thanks for this!

Thanks to all for their input/feedback!

-Russ H.

Here's a quick look at one of the new designs (for one B&B, doesn't incorporate the 2 B&Bs idea).

Sorry about the low res-- I uploaded a nice large image, highly compressed (200K, 900x1300 pixels), that looked great on this end-- but it's getting squashed when I upload it to the fastlane server.

Note that the two photos and insert quote fade to 10 different screens, then repeat-- the review proceeds, and the images tie in w/the review.

-Russ H.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Looks nice, Russ. But I don't see the discount button for "Fastlane Members"!!??

Not sure why you would want the specials on a different server. I just noticed that the URL changes too. Just seems odd. If you want more reliability, just get 2 servers and load balance them. Based on your Alexa ranking I don't think you even need more than 1 server or even a dedicated one.

The continuity is not there. I can't get back to the original site from the specials page.

I suggest that you move your menu to the top of the page instead of the middle of the page. People with small monitors will get stuck navigating if they don't scroll down.

Jill-

We could have a Fastlane Inn-sider card. Stay with us 10x, and the 11th is free!

Actually, we are crazy competitive-- our rates tend to be much, much lower than comparable establishments. For instance, we offer L'Occitane soaps, lotion, shampoos, etc-- the only other places in the Napa Valley that have these are at least $200-300 more per night. (that's just one example).

And we do special things for return guests and folks we know. But if I told you this, it would kinda wreck the surprise, right?

Bio-

Very good points-- esp the menu. I'll really take that into account when we do the redesign. The only real reason we have the specials page on a different site is that I can't change the existing website, and I change the specials page often. The folks who do our tracking wanted to keep them separate, to see who books from which page, and how many folks use the specials page as an entry page for booking (they'd have to bookmark it for this to happen). Answer is, a LOT of people do this (about 15-20% of our total online bookings). So we're going to talk to the tracking folks, and see if we can take advantage of this somehow.

But when we re-do the website, it will not have separate windows-- except for the separate booking page.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Others out there- are there things we should incorporate? Bad things w/our current site? Other ideas/opinions?

-Russ H.