A Guide to Web Presence for Self Catering Holiday Accommodation

In 2008 we decided to start offering holiday lets at our property, Faside Estate, just outside Edinburgh. My role in this was attracting guests through the creation of a website, having just that year completed a degree in Multimedia Technology and this was the first real-world project I took part in.

I decided to put this article together as I am aware that the Web in Box is changing and that there may be a few people out there who find web stuff fairly alien, and hopefully this will be of use.

A little bit of our background is we started holiday lets in 2008 and this was with just one of the properties and this acted as a test-bed for the venture. It also allowed us to furnish one property at a time which was good for cash flow as the other property was still generating income. We later decided to start renting out the old tower section at Faside Castle and this meant that a bit of the building not used for anything was given a new lease of life and this allowed us to appear on many websites we wouldn't have been eligible to appear on otherwise and helped increase traffic to our website.

To begin with, first you will have to come up with a name for your accommodation venture. Our address had always been Faside Castle but over the years we had bought land round about to breed horses and created two properties within an old stone barn. We took the decision to call the venture Faside Estate (www.faside-estate.com) and we changed the names of the properties from Barn 1 and Barn 2 to Woodside (the property near the woods) and Gateside (the property near the gate). Because it is a holiday that you are selling it is important to remember the naming of the accommodation is part of the overall branding.

For any venture like this it is important to identify what unique selling points your accommodation has. This can be anything from closeness to a battlefield site or location to a loch or a rock climbing facility. It can really be anything. A few areas we identified for our holiday accommodation were staying in the grounds of a castle, an association with horses and proximity to the city of Edinburgh. It is important to give some thought to this before speaking to a web developer for the reason that web developers will charge for their time.

From a developer's point of view Images and content are the two main things needed for creating a website and the more information a client can provide, the easier it is for a brand or theme to emerge and the quicker it is to build. To decide on pricing it is important to look at what is in the area and ensure that your pricing is realistic. You can also have a surcharge for short stays as it is the same work for a two night stay as it is for a seven night stay. This may have been done already if you had to create a business plan for any borrowing. We always try working this out on paper before adding it to the Visit Scotland Extranet.

The way many developers find work is through websites such as Gumtree or Freelancer. Freelancer is a place developers can bid in an auction-type environment for projects. Freelancer is very good. The only downside is the developer may not be local but that isn't necessarily an issue but you would have to then provide comprehensive images and text which local developers could supply. Freelancer is an open bit that others can compete against so this does mean you usually get very good value for money. The other option of course is to search for a web design company in your area.

You should look into hosting for your website and this shouldn't cost more than a few pounds a month. I use Vidahost and I find them very reliable but there are many, many companies offering this service. For your hosting account you will also have to choose a domain name so it is worth checking whether your desired domain name is available to register and you can check this by typing your domain name into a browser and seeing if a website appears at that address.

There are many, many ways of creating a web presence, from the cheapest to the most bespoke. You will see the occasional advert for companies like Weebly or 1and1 which are user focused but least bespoke and in the case of Weebly has a link through to their site at the foot. Also, 1and1 does charge for email addresses and this can cost hundreds of pounds a year compared to email services like Google Apps which are free.

Google has a few solutions. They have a service called Google Sites and they now own Blogspot. They are both services that you can set up without needing a "Webmaster" which is the title given to a person employed to develop or maintain a website. Also, this is a useful term to know if looking for a someone ot maintain the website. Because these services are from Google, statistics on the website are easily available.

You can use services such as Wordpress and these are great for allowing users to add new pages and make changes to the site. However, I personally feel they are still rather complex for the average person to use and it does take some learning to use. The other similar service to this are Drupal and Joomla.

My favorite way of building a website is using a service called Cushy CMS which allows a web designer to build a website however they wish it to look and then add a Content Management System which means it can look however you wish it to look and we have used it on our website, www.faside-estate.com for every page except the blog which I build a custom script for. It is also useful to know about because web developers may charge a lot for something that needn't cost much. The way this works differently to Wordpress etc is instead of keeping the text for each page in a database, Cushy CMS lifts the text which you can edit from the webpage and then republishes the page once you have made changes so it is simpler to both use and set up.

Breaking information down so that it is logically layed out and easy for users to navigate is very important. The navigation on the website should be easy to use and fulfill the website's purpose so in the case of an accommodation website it should be very much focused on making bookings, staying in touch with your company, or making an enquiry.

The design of the website is important as it is a showcase of your business. It is normally good to keep the design simple and to have consistency throughout the design to improve the user experience by making it more intuitive. On the Faside Estate website we have a navigation system consistent throughout which allows users to check availability or make an enquiry from every page and that was intentional.

I would also suggest using Google Apps for your webmail (email addresses using your domain prefix) as Google Apps far exceeds the capabilities of the usual default email applications.

It is good to be actively improving or updating content as technologies do change fast and new content helps users feel more engaged with the website. If you have a news section or a Blog this allows you to add up to date and relevant information to help promote the service. When people talk about Search Engine Optimization or Analytics this can seem very daunting but is in fact much more simple than most people would assume. Search Engines try to prioritize the most relevant website so look at what the top key words in the text are, the amount of content, the names of pages, what links are  on the site, words in the site's navigation etc. and decides how relevant it is to a search.

To improve your site in a search try making the content as relevant as possible and the more content the better. Where analytics comes in is if you are paying to be on a website it is worth looking to see if it is generating traffic to your site and whether the quality of traffic is good by which I mean relevant to your business. You may have AWStats installed by default with your hosting package but I would recommend setting up Google Analytics because the more data Google has on your website, the higher it can rank it. Tools such as Google Webmaster Tools allow you to see the top keywords and to see what pages have been indexed. A sitemap can also be submitted to Google using this service  so that pages are not missed.

It is important to maintain the "Social Media" side of your website and this means using Facebook and Twitter and perhaps having an E-letter that people can subscribe to. For our website we created a Business Listing on Facebook as well as a Twitter page.

You can promote your website by having paid advertising on Google and on Facebook. For Google you can use Google Adwords or Adword Express which feature on Google Maps. For Facebook you can use a service called Facebook Ads which lets you build a following on Facebook.

Our website is built using Cushy CMS and was designed as a one off for our purposes. We have created a History section which helps attract visitors who might not necessarily be looking for accommodation but can potentially be enticed. We merged our other activity at the Estate with the holiday accommodation.   This is horse breeding and has a separate website which shares the branding. We have also included a section on our rare breed sheep and again this can attract visitors who may not have been looking for accommodation and makes them aware that this is something we offer.

We chose a fixed layout and broke the information down into four headers. Two of these headers are for either checking availability or making a booking or enquiry which is an extremely good ratio. Every page includes a link to Facebook, Twitter and Email Updates and these are easy to notice. We have included sections on Eating Out, Towns, Golf and Museums.

We included a Blog which we manage to keep up to date and we manage to maintain a healthy following on Facebook and to a lesser degree Twitter. We also have a good subscription base of e-letter subscribers. The design is innovative and importantly fairly distinctive which helps our company stick out.

We have also put effortin to improving our websites performance in Google and this has included building links to our site and monitoring and reviewing our paid online advertising to get better performance for our money. We have also kept up to date with current web standards and this did include dropping a Flash Header that we used to have in anticipation of Internet Explorer dropping it in the near future.

I am personally very happy with our website presence. I believe the design is intuitive to use and manages to display a lot of information in a simple and attractive manner. I believe a definite brand can be felt throughout the website which is strong enough for people to associate with our company. I feel the content is interesting and it is very easy to update due to the use of a content management system and our RSS Feed which also allows us to update Twitter and Facebook automatically and generates the email notifications to subscribers.