E-Business and Digital Media for Tourism Planning Your Web Site

Objective: Defining your online objectives Defining your target markets and developing your Web site and online marketing strategy with them in mind Developing the Internet marketing strategy that is appropriate for your travel and tourism organization or your destination.

Planning Your Web Site With millions of travel and tourism Web sites competing for viewers, how do you get the results you’re looking for? A Web site is simply a collection of documents, images, and other electronic files that are publicly accessible across the Internet Your site needs to be designed to meet your online objectives and should be developed with your target market in mind. Internet marketing encompasses all the steps you take to reach your target market online, attract visitors to your Web site, encourage them to visit your destination, buy your spa or ski or golf travel packages, and make them want to come back for more.

The Fundamentals—Objectives, Target Markets, and Products and Services Back in old days the Web developer would then take the marketing materials and digitize some, scan some, and do some HTML programming to develop the site. By going through this process, organizations ended up with a Web site that looked just like their brochure, hence the term “brochureware.” Brochureware is no longer acceptable on the Web if you want to be successful; Travel-related sites that are successful today are ones that are designed around: Objectives of the organization Needs, wants, and expectations of their target markets ravel-related products and services that are being offered.

Everything related to Internet marketing revolves around these three things— objectives, target markets, and products or services; It is critically important to define these things appropriately and discuss them with your Web developer. It is your responsibility, not your Web developer’s, to define these things (objectives, target markets, and products or services)

Common Objectives Before you even start to create your Web site, you must clearly define your online objectives. What is the purpose of your site? Some of the most common primary objectives include: Advertising your travel-related products, services, or destination Selling your destination, vacation packages, and travel-related products or services Providing customer service and support Providing destination, accommodation, product or corporate information Creating and establishing brand identity and brand awareness.

Advertising Your Travel-Related Products, Services, or Destination The objective of many Destination Marketing Organizations, or DMOs, is simply to promote but not directly sell a travel-related product, service, or destination. The objective is to create awareness or a “buzz,” generate interest, and, ultimately, have a large number of people visit the destination. This type of site might include multimedia clips of the destination, pictures of the destination that appeal to the target market, viral marketing (“Tell a friend about this destination”), elements to encourage word-of-mouth marketing, an intriguing story about the destination, and other elements to help the DMOs achieve their objectives with their target market in mind.

Selling Your Destination, Vacation Packages, and Travel-Related Products or Services Online Selling products or services online is a common objective. The Internet provides a broad geographic reach and a huge demographic reach. Often travel and tourism organizations combine the objectives of advertising their travel packages and destination retreats with trying to sell them through their Web sites. This works well because visitors are not only given information about your packages, vacation specials, and your destinations, but they are given the option of easily booking online. The easier you make it, the more likely they are to buy or make a reservation.

Providing Customer Service and Support A great benefit of a Web site is that you can provide customer assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. By providing an easy way for your customers to solve their problems or get answers to their questions quickly and easily, you increase customer loyalty. Always include the appropriate contact information for customers to talk to a live person if they so choose

Providing Destination, Accommodation, Product, or Corporate Information It is important for travel, tourism, and destination organizations to provide information on their vacation packages, accommodations, and products and services information to a particular target market. Some might also want to provide corporate information to potential investors. If your organization courts the media, it might include a media center, which can include all your press releases, corporate background, information on key company officials, articles that have been written about the company, and a gallery of relevant pictures that the media can use, as well as a direct link to the company’s media

Creating and Establishing Company Identity and Brand Awareness Another objective might be to create and establish company identity and brand awareness. Based on the success of companies such as Orbitz.com, Yahoo!, Travelocity, Amazon, and eBay, it is apparent that branding a company or product on the Web can occur swiftly. Each of the sites features a prominent logo, consistent imagery, and a consistent color scheme. When trying to establish corporate identity, any graphics developed for your Web site must be top-notch and reflect the colors associated with your corporate logo. A catchy slogan further promotes corporate identity. Your Web site must have a consistent look and feel and all offline promotional campaigns and material must be consistent with your online presence.

Other Objectives to Consider up Front Following are some common secondary objectives for travel and tourism organizations to consider: Your site should be designed to be search-engine friendly. Your site should be designed to encourage repeat traffic. Your site should have viral marketing elements that encourage visitors to recommend your destination, packages, and vacation specials to others. Your site should incorporate permission marketing, where visitors are encouraged to give you permission to send them e-mail, newsletters, e-specials, golf packages, etc., on a regular basis. Your site should be designed to encourage customer loyalty. Your site should incorporate stickiness, encouraging visitors to stay awhile and visit many areas of the site.

A Final Word on Objectives Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve. You obviously will have a number of different objectives for your site, but many of these objectives can work together to make your Web site complete. Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the travel and tourism market. Read everything you can find and examine the findings of industry experts. Your Web site objectives form a critical element in your Web site design and development, as you will see in the next section.

Target Markets For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine: Their needs Their wants Their expectations. When you look at—really look at—potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site are probably different. Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Learning about your vacation packages, destination information, accommodations, your business practices, and the like, are not a priority for this person. A potential customer needs to know about these things before giving you their business.

Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments. If you were a hotel, for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into: Business travelers Vacation travelers Family travelers Meeting planners Handicapped travelers Tour operators Golfers Outdoor adventure enthusiasts Eco-tourists.

Storyboarding Your Web Site The storyboard is the foundation of your Web site. Consider it the architectural plan or blueprint of your site. It should show you, on paper, the first draft of the content and layout of your site. It gives you the chance to review the layout and make changes before development begins. A Web site storyboard can be thought of much like a hierarchical organizational chart in a business. In a typical business structure, the executives sit on top, followed by their subordinates, and so on.

The storyboard can be created with a software program like Microsoft Visio, with sheets of paper, or with any other mechanism.

Detailed Web Site Planning You need to develop the specific content, text, and graphics for each page of your site. The first draft of the text, for each page, should be developed by you. You know your target market better than anyone, you know what makes them book, you know what packages and specials they want and you know the buzz words for your industry far better than your Web developer. Once you have the first draft of the text done, you want to have this text reviewed and edited by an online copywriter.

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