Owning a Tourism Business is awesome

14 Jun 2009

50 Tips To A User Friendly Website – Designing Interactive

Here is a list of 50 things that I keep in mind on every website that I build. Some of these are secrets I have acquired from the best designers in the world, and some of them are standard every day practices. Either way, these tips will improve your visitors experience on your website.

  1. Clicking on the logo should take you to the home page;
  2. Your logo/site title should be positioned in the top left of the page;
  3. Duplicate your main navigational links in the page footer with links to additional, but less prominent pages;
  4. Keep your navigation positioning consistent from page to page;
  5. Don’t open links in a new tab/window, except PDF’s and embedded documents;
  6. Highlight your current location in your navigation bar;
  7. Use reasonable sized fonts (12px or larger);
  8. Make sure font sizes are flexible (Use em’s or %, not px);
  9. Sans-serif fonts are easier to read at small sizes;
  10. Serif fonts are easier to read at large sizes;
Full list here: 50 Tips To A User Friendly Website – Designing Interactive

13 Jun 2009

Facebook | Username

Starting NOW, you can choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

To select your username, visit the link NOW:
http://www.facebook.com/username/

To learn more about usernames, visit the Help Center:
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=89

12 Jun 2009

Online Marketing for Beginners - Online Marketing - Added Bytes

It is amazing how many people hire online marketers without the faintest idea of what online marketers actually do. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is fairly simple - SEOs will try and improve your site's performance, usually by trying to leverage their knowledge of how search engines work and tricks they can use to make sites seem more relevant than they actually are to specific keywords.

Marketing online, though, need not have anything to do with search engines. Search engines are irrelevant - good positions and traffic are a by-product of effective online marketing.

Unfortunately, after educating a client on what online marketing is, they usually assume that if they pay you a few hundred pounds, you can make their site compete with the very best out there.

See full article here: Online Marketing for Beginners - Online Marketing - Added Bytes

10 Jun 2009

Online Marketing training for tourism professionals - ORC Educational Exchange

The vision of Online Revealed Canada is to provide a unique venue to facilitate hands on education within the travel industry from a grass roots perspective. We are pleased to announce the dates and locations of 7 Regional Online Revealed Canada Educational Exchanges.

What is an ORC Educational Exchange?
The ORC Educational Exchange is a hands-on Regional one-day workshop for hospitality suppliers, vendors, hotel groups, individual hotels, tourism operators, travel intermediaries, agencies and other Canadian travel professionals. Upon conclusion of the workshop, attendees will have working knowledge of topics such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media and Revenue & online distribution Management.

To ensure we provide quality and relevant content for each community, Online Revealed has identified known professionals in each destination who have a passion for providing education, identified as Destination Educational Leaders. These leaders assist Online Revealed in identifying a relevant local keynote speaker, provide insights into hot topics important to the community and assist in facilitating the 'Idea's Market'.

These one-day Regional workshops are your opportunity to have your organization's first "Web Max" Meeting. Affordably priced to bring in numerous members of your team, you will be able to experience hands-on e-marketing workshops tailored toward your region and how to promote travel online!

CityDate
MontrealSeptember 13, 2007
OttawaOctober 30, 2007
EdmontonNovember 13, 2007
CalgaryNovember 15, 2007
TorontoJanuary 17, 2008
HalifaxJanuary 24, 2008
Vancouver March 13, 2008
Price: $249.00 plus GST $14.94 Total Cost: $263.94

With a local relevant keynote, the Educational Exchange continues with 4 unique workshops mirroring the tracks of the annual Online Revealed Canada Conference: Organic Search, Paid Placement, New Media and Travel. The "Ideas Market" brings together ideas and best practice sharing between participants wrapping up the day with a Technology Update!

Don't miss out on this opportunity for a hands-on experience that will educate you about the online tools available to your organization for increased site traffic and more importantly INCREASED REVENUE!

Yours in Quality Online Travel Education,
Steve Nardi, Managing Director
Alan Young, Event Co-Chair
Alicia Whalen and Patricia Brusha, Co-founders


Online Marketing training for tourism professionals - ORC Educational Exchange

Travel 2.0 and e-tourism analysis and insight. Internet travel research and web analytics from online visitor behaviour experts Highland Business Research

The Internet is no longer the new kid on the block in terms of travel research and planning - it is absolutely mainstream amongst travellers of all ages and backgrounds. Even those who book offline are likely to have used the Internet to formulate their plans. (See our Tracking Tourism article for more).

Are you able to tap into existing social networks of potential visitors online, to ensure your marketing efforts are both more effective and extensive?

Do you know:

  • How people are finding you online?
  • The factors that are influencing tourists research and conversion decisions?
  • The propensity of your target market segments to research and book online?
  • The ability of the suppliers in your destination to meet the increasingly sophisticated expectations of visitors?
  • Whether your social media, paid search and online marketing activity is working?

Understanding visitor behaviour online

Methods Highland Business Research utilise in our Travel 2.0 and e tourism research include:

  • Consumer and supplier behaviour research
  • Website measurement and online campaign analysis
  • Competitor destination and trends research
  • Online social network analysis
  • Destination and supplier readiness research
  • Consolidation, analysis and insight from online comments and feedback

From ground-breaking research like our recent online social network analysis of the Scottish Diaspora worldwide, advanced web analytics, through to tourism e-business surveys and online visitor feedback analysis, Highland Business Research is focussed on meeting the intelligence requirements of the modern travel and tourism industry.

What are your critical questions?

Whether you are looking to improve online competitiveness, identify new prospects or transform marketing and communication strategies, your unique circumstances will drive the questions you have and the insight you require.

To discuss the questions you are trying to solve, please contact Stephen Budd or call on (44) 01463 729314.

For the latest tourism research thinking and discussion visit Tracking Tourism, our tourism industry research blog, recently named as one of the top 10 business blogs by Travel Weekly.


Travel 2.0 and e-tourism analysis and insight. Internet travel research and web analytics from online visitor behaviour experts Highland Business Research

9 Jun 2009

14 Serious Mistakes of Your Tourism Brochure Marketing Strategy

This is a long article with many parts of interesting skills and knowledge and up to now is the best article about brochure marketing in the world; In fact, it's the first chapter of Advanced Tourism Brochure Marketing Package published by T-IM.com ; therefor, its content is also great for any businesses which have a marketing brochure.

This article is so comprehensive and has 2 parts:

Part 1: The first 7 serious brochure marketing mistakes

Part 2: The second 7 mistakes more to be revealed.

Due to the length of the whole article make difficult to read and remember for reader , I just supply the part 1. At the end of this article, there will have a link to the part 2 and Friendly print version of the whole article.

Keep reading.

Part 1: The first 7 serious brochure marketing mistakes

A well- planed and carefully-designed tourism brochure will indeed increase the services business; especially it is the business of tourism. But many tourism marketers don’t make effective use of their brochure and leave out important elements. That is a cost, a real damage for your business.

If you have a marketing tool to use, you must ultimately exploit its profit; if you can not take advantage of the promotional tool, the money and time of publishing the tool is one of the biggest costs. The second cost is the lost prospects caught by your competitors who use this same tool at its most power. And the third created by the weakness of your integrated marketing plan – you do not know how to use one among many of your marketing tools effectively, how can you use the rest to get the most benefit of your marketing mix.

Read full article here: 14 Serious Mistakes of Your Tourism Brochure Marketing Strategy

About the author:

David Kan is the CEO of T-IM.com

T-IM.com is the largest global Free tourism internet marketing resources with 57 & more online tools and forum to help tourism industry enhance their internet marketing result.

Website URL: http://www.tourism-internetmarketing.com

Click this link to quickly join in the Tourism Internet Marketing Forum to enhance your internet sale as well as receive the great forum benefits.

http://www.tourism-internetmarketing.com/parent_page/Frequently_Asked_Question.htm#benefit