Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 438. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how the secret sauce to a direct booking website.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
00:40 Bigger buttons for your website
02:30 Real-time reviews
03:20 The importance of FAQs
Whilst you’re here
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
First and foremost, I've got nothing to sell you on this in this call, I want to, I want to do a couple of different styles. And there's going to be a future time. And again, I'm going to take your feedback on this, I've got two different webinars in mind one where it's going to be like this, where there's no sale at the end of it, nothing to sell nothing promote. And one way I want to do a crazy offer at the end, when you've got a direct booking website that turns lookers into bookers, it just means that your whole marketing and your whole world is so much easier. Because then what you can do is you are confident that you can go onto social media, for example, you can send out an email, or you could be in the shops, and you just notice, somebody is asking for accommodation, and you can go, hey, I can help go visit my website and your content, you can send someone to your website, and it will turn a look into a booker.
Bigger buttons for your website
On your website, you will have clickable buttons. Okay, so if you're, say we're on a desktop, it's super simple, because you grab your mouse, you move your mouse to where it wants to go, and you click on it. Okay? When you're on your phone, you haven't got a clickable mouse, okay, if you're like me, you've got big fat arms from playing too much computer games when I was a kid.
So on the mobile phone, if you've got really little buttons, you are making life, so much harder for the user, the user experience is everything. So again, make sure that when you're designing your website, and you've got the ability, make sure you've got bigger buttons, fatter forms, like me, Okay, super simple. If you're going to work with somebody to design your website, make sure that they specialize solely in accommodation websites, this is a big thing that I see. I see in the Facebook group, I see in the hospitality community group, I just see it in forums.
And people are saying Who did your website and it's amazing. The names that come back, for example, a family friend, the number of times that I see a family friend, because they were going to do it for cheap or for free. So when somebody comes to you, and it's like a friend of a family member, or someone down the pub, who's next door neighbor does websites, trust me, if you use them, and they're not specialist and accommodation websites, then you're just going to waste your time, and your money, trust. And reviews are so important. And it's criminal to not have latest real-time reviews on your direct booking site.
Real-time reviews
Now, when I say real reviews, or real-time reviews, I'm not meaning copy and paste in a review that you had on Airbnb, or your Facebook page, or your Google and plant in on your website. People don't believe that now in 2020, there are some amazing tools that don't cost a lot of money, where you can grab a link from your Airbnb, your booking.com, VRBO, your Facebook, your Google, and they can pull those reviews in real-time on your website, when you have an FAQ on your homepage is fantastic Google juice with a lovely thing that people call SEO, we get so many people to come to me. And we have lots and lots of calls every week from hosts.
The importance of FAQs
And one of the first things that they ask is, I want to get to number one on Google, however, yet the top of Google. And you know, it's a really cool, really cool conversation to have. But I just say like one of the easiest ways to get your website more noticed by Google is in 2022, is by having a FAQ or frequently asked question. So I'll repeat that again. So you've got your direct booking website, let's just say it's Mark simpson.com. You go to Mark Simpsom.com, you go for all the things and that trust factor is there.
You know, you've got the trust and all that cool stuff up there, the reviews and whatnot. They hit book now when it takes into a totally different domain. And the problem with that is that when that happens, the trust factor goes. In a day and age of online piracy and no scams and it was really high in 2020. It's if you want to keep that trust factor there, you got to make sure that you're booking and the whole system is done on the same domain. So on-site booking with a guest or a host or future potential guest comes to your website, say you're fully booked for whatever reason. And you can still bring in some form of revenue still get the direct booking, and you can pass it and share it amongst the community. And that's my goal. Now the reason why that is beneficial. Number one, if you've got a future potential guest who's looking to do a direct booking, they land on your website. You know, you've got a very limited amount of availability. You know, there's only so many people that you can get heads on beds.
But if you can keep the booking in your town, if you can keep the book in the diary booking world to stop them from going, it's not available. Let me go back to Airbnb. It keeps it as a direct booking which is so important for everything that I want to achieve in this in this enjoyment with my time being here.
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