Helping small tour operators and niche agents with travel ecommerce
What is the next step?
Dear friends,
When you have the knowledge of the area, the certifications and permissions, the vehicles, the itineraries, a complete and well designed product, competitive prices, the guides, the nice office and website...
When you have everything described above, what should be wrong? Why we have no clients? How to get them? How to let them know that you exist? When all the big companies pay thousands of dollars to the hotels to operate the tours for their guests, how to get a piece of the cake?
What is the next step? Are there some agencies on the other side of the coin wondering about local tour operators? How to make the link between them and us? How to contact directly the possible clients before they are swallowed by the hotels and leave nothig to the small companies?
Guillermo Gonzalez - KulTours (Mexico)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on -
Hi Guillermo
Thank you for asking your question here.
Firstly the website. It is very nicely designed - but it is not, in my opinion, a good shop front for your tours
1) Flash only - no pages that are designed for search engines
2) Click on "click here reservations" and there is no form - not even an enquiry form etc. Hence I have to create a freetext email to send to you. I am not going to send you a free text email if I have to listen to that music
So say I am coming to Mexico - how would I know which of these tours is geographically near where I am going to be? I don't recognise any of the names of the tours? They need to be on a map so I can see where they are. Hence very difficult to get a feel as to what tours you have in what regions.
OK, so in my opinion the website isn't working for you. However then it comes down to marketing? Do you form trade relationships? This isn't entirely necessary as many specialist tour operators go direct to consumers - if their markets can work that way (and most can).
Right now though I wouldn't spend too much money on web advertising until you have, sorry to say it, an HTML website that presents your tours as products that people can learn about, compare and easily enquire about.
Sorry to sound so negative about your existing website. Its a very nicely put together site - very aspirational. However I am afraid that you don't want an aspirational site if you are selling niche tours - you want a functional site. A functional site won't win you any design awards but it will generate bookings.
(This is a start of a conversation, hopefully others will join in and come up with other views)
Thanks. Alex
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Permalink Reply by Andy Hayes on -
Hi Guillermo,
I'm afraid I have to side with Alex on this one. I realise that you paid good money for a website that looks good - and it is beautiful. But as a web usability expert, I have to say that looking good and converting browsers into buyers are not the same thing.
Here's a few things I could point out:
- The site (as mentioned) is all Flash. It took 2-3 minutes for me to load on my high speed broadband. Most users wouldn't wait more than 20 seconds for a site to load. This is killing your conversion rates even before you have time to tell people about your offering.
- You have a very prominent "Click here for reservations" button - it is an offset colour and in the upper left hand corner, two things that means a LOT of people will click on this. But the page that loads does not have anything to do making a reservation. User expectations mis-match, which means I'll leave.
- You do specialised niche tours to Mexico, right? Count how many times that word appears on your site. It is very difficult for me to understand what you do - and I tried. Consumers won't give you the benefit of the doubt.
As Alex says, I hate to be critical, but it seems like you're at a rough point and I hope you find these points constructive.
Andy
www.travelonlinepartners.com
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Permalink Reply by Guillermo Gonzalez Canales on -
Thank you about your comments of my website... :( I like it, but you're so right, I prefer reservations.
I liked also your comments about my music haha! What kind of music do you recommend for my niche tours? Or is it better without any music?
Summarizing... By changing my flash website to an html (maybe some flash here and there), turning off the boring music and adding a good booking engine (I’ll try to understand how to use Alex’s booking engine to use it in my website in the fancy "Reservations" link) … Could I see a significant change in the number of direct consumers?
I have another question… What about the content? Are the pictures more important than the text?
Thanks so much, I hope welcoming you to MEXICO!
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Permalink Reply by Andy Hayes on
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No music. It's just a distraction in my opinion and lowers conversion rates in my experience.
And as for content, a good balance is good. Pictures say a 10k words, they say, but you need content to answer people's questions (what is it, why do i want it, how much is it, how does it work, how do i know you're not a spammer, etc etc).
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Permalink Reply by Matt Zito on -
Guillermo, I am in agreement with everything Alex said in the first post. Your website is designed for informational purposes not for online booking or e-commerce sales.
In the immediate here are two things you can do:
-Place your celebrity testimonials on the first page, www.kultours.com.mx
-Place the location or destination where you tours are located on the first page, so I know where in Mexico the tours are taking place.
You need to change your website if you want to sell direct. If you want to do deals with hotels and agencies leave your email address at my website www.mattzito.com. I have an upcoming free report on Online Travel marketing strategy that will help you, including strategies on how to build and grow a successful Online Travel Business.
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