Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Where Can I get a Cheap Travel Website?
A Basic Travel Agency Presence Site
By Tom Ogg

When many agents ask where they can get a cheap website, they are most often looking for a basic travel agency site that acts like an ad in the Yellow Pages, but only on the Internet. The answers offered tend to be the same as if you substituted “business Cards” for website.  While the printers that will give you free business cards (such as Vista Print) in exchange for an advertisement on the card also offer free websites, is that the image that you really want to promote? All one has to do is attend a travel industry trade show and collect business cards from travel agents to see that hundreds of agents are using the same flimsy Blue Vista Print business card.  While the cards are basically free, they convey the message that the presenter is not at all serious about their business image. Cheap business cards reflect upon their owners as being non-professional and well, cheap.  Free websites also convey the same image of their owners.

There are also many free hosted sites that one can access that look much more professional and full featured than basic html sites. As an example, The blogging powerhouse WorPress,com is free, the social networking functionality of Ning.com is free and all one has to do is Google “Free Websites” and you will be inundated with offers to host your free website. There are hundreds of companies that offer them in exchange for the right to run advertising on the site. They are easy to use and completely free. But, is this the way to go?

This is where you need to answer the question “What do you want the website to do for you?”

Basic websites have the power to drive business. All you have to do is think like a consumer. Google and other search engines geo-map businesses so that if you are looking for a flower shop, as an example, and enter an address anywhere in the U.S., they will serve you the flower shops closest to the address in descending order based on their location. Each address contains complete contact information so that a consumer can then call, email, SKYPE or otherwise communicate with the flower shop. The same is true for travel agents.

Agents may also want to have a website to demonstrate that they are online and technologically “with it”. While this is hardly a viable idea to support the investment in building a web presence, it is none-the-less one of the basic reasons agents are looking for cheap websites.

If you can define the reason that you want a website as “I want to have a web presence so that clients can see that I am on the World Wide Web and find me in the search engines” then you now have a viable reason to explore the development of a specific website for your business.

What are the key elements of a basic website?”

Branded Domain Name: First and foremost, you want the site to be easy for your clients to find. The domain name should be easy memorable to the point of being obvious. As an example, if the name of your business is “(Your City) Cruise Center” and you specialize in selling cruises, the your domain name should be “YourCityCruiseCenter.com.” This will allow your advertising to support your branded website.

Strong Call to Action: A basic website is really a strong call to action and should only serve that purpose.  The objective of a basic website is to allow existing and new clients to locate you and then find out more about you, your experience and value proposition. Everyone already knows that they can book cruises online, but why should a prospective client book their cruise with you? If you establish a strong unique selling proposition of extensive knowledge, personal service and security, a consumer is quite likely to contact you. This is especially true if your fall within their geographical range.

You should obtain a Google Voice number so that you can forward calls to any number of telephones when a new client initiates a contact from your site. Nothing can kill a potential new client faster than an answering machine. One of the primary reasons that you can out-compete the online giants is with personal service. Personal service starts with a voice at the other end of the telephone in the client’s mind.

Easily Found Using Relative Keywords: Having a motivating website is useless if consumers cannot find you in search engines.. Your site should be optimized for the specific keywords consumers in your market would use to find you on the Internet. Keywords such as “Your City Cruise Specialist” “Your City Cruise Agent” “Your City Royal Caribbean Cruise Specialist” and so on will be very important to the success of your site. Note that if you use the term “Cruise Specialist” in your keywords that your site will be delivered to individuals in your area looking for a “Cruise Specialist” because of the geo mapping functionality of the search engines. This is one of the most important reasons to have strong keyword development on your site.

Clean and Memorable Design: A basic website should not offer a booking engine, blog, social media or other interactivity. It should consist of content focused on converting a visit to a contact. If you offer an e-newsletter, a printed newsletter or other outreach, you should try to capture your client’s information, but only after you have compelled them to contact you immediately via telephone. A basic website should have a home page, testimonials, contact information and promote a strong and unique value proposition. The site should be clean and concise.

Where Can I Get A Cheap Basic Website?

Now that we know what we want the website to do for us and have defined the elements deemed important for it, we can start eliminating several options. Free hosted websites are not going to work because of the dilution of the advertising. Blogs, social media and other free sites will not work because they do not provide the quality of keyword density necessary to allow the search engines to clearly define and rank the site. Further, we need to be able to clearly allow the search engines to geo map the specific market we are targeting. The optimum site will be an HTML site with no Flash, Frames or database. It should be a high keyword density site that is optimized for search engines. Here is how to get the very best site for the least amount of money that will do the job.

Write your Entire Website: Create a page in your Text editor for each page in your website. You might have a home page and one for contact info, testimonials, agency information and an email information request form. Complete each page with as much information that you can. Also, be sure to include your complete contact information on each and every page.

Find a Website Design:  Shop around using “Website Templates” as a search term in Google and other search engines to find thousands of different website designs. Check out the work performed on the International bid sites for more ideas. Once you have found a design that you like try to bring the whole thing together so that web designers can easily understand what you are looking for.

Bid Out Your Website for Development: Use one of the international bid sites like www.GetaCoder.com, www.CrowdSpring.com, www.eLance.com and so on to bid your new website out for construction. Write your job description with pin point specifics to ensure that you get exactly what you want. www.CrowdSpring.com takes a unique approach where designers will actually submit designs to you to choose from and you simply award the job to the designer that gets closest to creating exactly the image that you are looking for. You should be able to get a new logo and website for around $250.00. However, this will be an effective site that will accomplish that results that it was intended to produce and also give you a unique and professional image.