No matter how large the travel site is, its creation is only half the battle. The second half (and, believe me, it is infinite) is a process of continuous improvement: both the site’s work and the agency’s functioning as a whole must constantly evolve, taking into account the needs of clients, otherwise, ultimately, the agency will eventually leave the market.
However, if the right approach to the creation of the site, then he (the site) will structure and optimize the agency. Let’s look at the perfect algorithm for creating a travel agency website that will help bring such a scenario to life.
Step 1: Define the financial goals of the agency
Let us at this point proceed from the implacable statistics. How much do you need to sell tours per month with the help of the site for the travel agency to be profitable? Ten? Twenty? Thirty five? Multiply your figure by eight (in the optimistic forecast) and by 10 (in the pessimistic one) – you’ll get the number of applications your website should generate (how many applications will come from the website to all agency managers). Now think about what traffic sources you will use to bring the desired target audience to your site.
Step 2: Draw a portrait of the target audience
Now let’s simplify a little the “terrible” task of finding the target audience that we mentioned in the previous step. Let us tell you a little secret: in order to understand where to look for an audience, you need to understand what its representatives look like.
Therefore, the second step that you need to do is to draw a portrait of your target audience. He will help you when placing advertising, and directly when creating a site for your travel agency (see the next step). At the same time, remember that the more accurately you draw a portrait of your target audience, the easier it will be to follow all the following steps. We had a case in which the owners and management of travel agencies were firmly convinced that their target audience is families with children, middle-income and above, aged 25-35 years. What was their surprise when, after 6 months of work, after analyzing their database, they realized that the target audience of their travel agency (and the target audience of their website, respectively) were families without children, average income and above, aged 35-55 years !
Step 3: Create a website
So, you have decided who your travel agency will sell tours. It’s time to go to the creation of the site. Why just now, and not at an earlier stage? Because the site also needs to be created taking into account the portrait of the target audience (a little more about this can be found in one of our materials) and actions that members of the audience perform on the site.
The procedure directly in the development of the site is as follows:
- consider the structure of the future site
- draw mockups
- make a website
- place on content management system (CMS)
- install the necessary counters and modules on the site
And, as soon as you complete this item, it’s time to go directly to the “combat testing” of the site.
Step 4: Testing the site and receiving feedback
You do not like to waste money? Do not love. Therefore, as soon as your travel agency has its own website, do not rush to buy paid advertising. Let’s test it first for free. For this, several channels are most often used:
- friends
- family
- existing customers
How to test the newly created website of your travel agency? Send a letter to all specified channels asking for comment on the appearance and usability of the site (customers can be promised some kind of a bun at the next booking as a thank you). You can even prepare a questionnaire with questions that interest you most.
Step 5: Make edits and start again
«Why start all over again?», you may ask. Then, as we said at the beginning of the material, the creation of an effective travel site (and business as a whole) is a process of continuous improvement. And you have to do it all the time if you want to be successful! Therefore, the cycle of “testing innovations for the audience & gt; Editing is endless. The only thing that will change in it is a form of receiving feedback: if friends and family helped you test the site immediately after creating it, then you will conduct it to a live audience of your site using services such as Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica.
In fact, creating a website for a travel agency is not a difficult task, but it requires attention and consistency. If you have difficulties in passing this process – contact us, we will be happy to help!
