Easier-Innkeeping-With-Web-Reservation-Desk
Design

  Design is the skill behind
  great marketing.

  Color, contrast, graphics,
  organization, ease of use,
  and sex appeal are all basic
  design considerations. These
  must all be considered and
  optimized for marketing to
  work properly.
Design is an under rated skill that makes a great difference in your overall marketing strategy.  Looking at our site you can see some examples of an effective design.  Your customer's eyes and their attention are the number one priority you should be working toward.  The viewer's subconscious must be pleased by what it sees in order for them to be open to your message.

Color, contrast, and the use of graphics is a skill that requires years of experience and a lot of natural artistic talent.  Organization and simplicity are essential to easy of use and key to keeping your customers engaged and even enthusiastic about your message.

We all enjoy interesting and informative web sites.  The ones that deliver content which we are looking for in an enjoyable way and that enables us to make clear decisions. The ones which help us learn about the products and services that we are really interested in.

Our consulting service will examine your business and capture a sense of its personality, history, and other strong points.  We will examine your business photos to form an image of what you wish to project, and we will pay close attention to the features you wish to emphasize.   If possible we will examine any testimonials from your clients, so that we can accurately understand some of the strongest features that your Inn delivers.

You will always be an active participant and must enthusiastically approve any web pages and images that are shown to your customers.  If you are unhappy with any content then we will make changes, without dragging our feet.  Your approval is always our first priority and there is never any extra charge for this courtesy.

Warning: Do not depend on your color judgment as there is a whole science dedicated to color combinations.  One good place to start when picking colors is to purchase a book such as 'The Designer's Tookit' by Graham Davis.  The colors on this page are taken from the 084_No_Picnic.tif combination.

          084_No_Picnic

By variations of brightness you can be guaranteed a perfect color match, excellent contrast, and in this case a picnic mood.  There are 1000s of color combinations in Graham's book and the entire color combination collection can be easily transferred to your computer from the included CD that comes with the book.

Here is a direct quote from Graham's Introduction, "Color is fundamental to all design.  It can be used to evoke a mood, to grab attention, to identify a product, or to organize information.  In the pre-digital age the choice of color was limited by the availability of pigments, but no such constraints exist today.  With at least 16 million different colors to choose from, the problem for today's artist and designer is how to narrow down the options."

Later he says, "The effectiveness of color in both organizing information and selling goods had always been recognized.  For hundreds of year atlas publishers used color to separate boundaries and to identify features like rivers and height levels."

And here is one last though I will leave you with from his book.  "Color is, and always will be, an enormously powerful part of human experience and therefore one the most potent tools available to the designer and artist as, like music, it can play directly on the emotions.  It has fascinated scientists and psychologists, as well as artists, and numerous theories exist to explain how we perceive color, why color combinations clash or are harmonious, and why particular colors - like red for danger - have developed an association."

In deed poor colors choices can actually drive customers away from your site.  They can project disgust, anger, and indifference so it is very important to choose your colors carefully.


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Copywriting is the next most important design factor after pictures and colors.
Visitors to your page will only spend from 5 to 15 seconds before moving on to another page.  That is, unless you can catch their attention, and then tell them exactly the information that they came to your site to find out about.

Below is a free lesson on copywriting given by Joe Robson.  To read his entire free tutoral you can click on this link.

 "To Win The Game
You Must Know The Rules"

Yes, I know you're dying to get started straight away.

But before you start writing those benefit-soaked web pages we need to examine how an advertisement (ad) is structured. However, there is one extremely important rule that must be remembered;

"The golden rule of advertising is -
there are no golden rules!"

Most successful advertising follows the same set of basic 'rules'. But we should really refer to them as guidelines. Because rules are meant to be broken otherwise we would have no room for innovation or creativity. But breaking the fundamental guidelines can be risky. And risk in advertising can bring great rewards - or expensive failure. So until you have a lot of copywriting experience behind you - stick to the tried and proven copywriting basics and you won't go far wrong.

So, why stick your neck out? These principles have been used by successful advertisers since time immemorial. They work. And who are we to argue?

Let's look at the elements of a basic ad and then examine it's component parts in detail;

  • THE HEADLINE grabs the reader's attention.

  • THE SUBHEAD reinforces the main heading.

  • ILLUSTRATION or PHOTO emphasizes the headline benefit.

  • THE BODY COPY starts with a compelling paragraph that leads the reader in to the next section.

  • FURTHER PARAGRAPHS support and reinforce the benefits of the offer.

  • PENULTIMATE PARAGRAPH warns the reader of the consequences of missing out on the offer.

  • FINAL PARAGRAPH stimulates response. (Order now)

  • PS gives a further reason to respond and reinforces the offer.

  • COMPANY LOGO (almost) ALWAYS goes at the end. Except web pages.

  • TAG LINE makes the reader feel comfortable about the company, eg AXG Computers - we never let you down

If you're writing a direct response sales letter, this structure should almost always be used, (along with the many other successful marketing ploys that are added to your sales package). Web pages require a slightly different technique, but the overall principle is still the same;

  • Grab Attention

  • Stimulate Interest

  • Build up Desire

  • Urge the reader into Action!

 "Oh no, not A.I.D.A. again!"

'Fraid so. But if it makes you feel any better I could re-phrase it. How about ...

  • Stop him in his tracks

  • Pin his ears back

  • Excite him to fever pitch

  • Tell him that because your offer is so fantastic only a fool would let such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass him by and he must order now or else he'll regret it for ever so he should grab his credit card now and enjoy the life-style of his dreams and be the envy of his friends forever!

It means the same but I think AIDA is easier to remember.

ATTENTION. INTEREST. DESIRE. ACTION. Keep these four 'triggers' in the forefront of your mind when writing your Copy, and I promise you won't go far wrong.

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Adding Videos 

We can do all the setup work for our customers at no charge but if you are interested in how we do it, then just read the follow instructions.

Video is an eye catcher and a very friendly way to show your guest a tour of your Inn or the great view which they will have from their porch.  You can have as many videos as you like and youtube.com will keep all these videos for you for absolutely free. 

You can do 360 degree views of each room, show and talk about a free breakfast or afternoon wine tasting.  Your guest can really get a feel for how friendly and great your Inn is before they ever arrive.

All you need is a digital camcorder and a free youtube.com account or other free video hosting site.

  • Once you've finished editing your video, made sure it's less than 10 minutes, smaller than 1GB in size, and in an acceptable format, then you are ready to upload it.

    1. Click the "Upload" button in the upper-right-hand corner of any YouTube page.
    2. Enter as much information about your video as possible, including Title, Description, Tags, and Category. The more information you include, the easier it is for users to find your video!
    3. Determine if you want your video set to Public or Private.  Make sure it is Public so your guests can view it. 
    4. Click the "Upload a Video..." button.
    5. In the next window, click the "Browse" button to browse for the video file. Select the file you want to upload.
    6. Click the "Upload Video" button.
    It can take from a couple minutes to an hour for your video to upload to YouTube.

    If you're receiving an error with your Upload, you might want to make sure you're attempting to upload a file that's recognized by YouTube. YouTube accepts video files from most digital cameras and camcorders, and cell phones in the .AVI, .MOV, .WMV, and .MPG file formats.

  • You'll need to edit the HTML of your page—this should be relatively straightforward. Find the video that you just uploaded, and look for the 'Embed' box in the "About This Video" section. Copy the HTML code that's there into your website and it will create an embedded player on your web page; the video will play when a user clicks on the 'Play' button.
  • You can resize the player by editing the object width="425" and height="350" fields at both the beginning and end of the embedded player code. Make sure that the sizes you choose have the same ratio as the default numbers, so that the video doesn't get stretched—just multiply the width by 0.8235 to get the height.


    Here is an example of a video that we found which while recorded by a TV station would be quite easy for you to make.



    We can edit our customers videos to make then look professional at no extra cost.

    If you need a URL and/or web hosting and do not wish to use our services at this time then we suggest using Network Solutions.
                                                                                                                


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