Your vacation rental - How to be successful - Part II
If you have done some research into making your own vacation rental website then you will a notice a few things that all good owner-run vacation rentals use to entice guests into booking their property. Can you guess? There are really two answers that go hand in hand – pictures and words. The more detailed you can be without getting too long winded the better.
In this lesson we will look at the most important part of any website - CONTENT!
- Using words to paint a picture.
- Using pictures to paint…a picture.
- Organizing your content to paint a clear picture.
If you have a website full of pictures and a phone number you might get a few phone calls, but more often then not you will be left high and dry. At the same time if you vacation rental website that is all words and has no photos potential guests will have no reference point to what your cabin looks like, and if you are even describing what you have accurately. If you have a jumble of hard to read words and giant pictures that take up more than the whole screen, it could be displeasing to a person’s time - and internet connection - that they will hit the back button faster than you can say Vacations Rule! A good combination of these elements are essential in making your vacation rental website successful.
Using words to paint a picture
Writing is a tricky process on paper. Writing for the Internet is about five times trickier. Think about it – have you ever sat down and read a book online? Nope. Unless something is extremely interesting readers will skim articles for the important points.
This is doubly true if someone is on the hunt or doing research. Most people want to get in and out of websites as fast as possible obtaining the maximum amount of knowledge in the process. It is like a guy shopping for pants. He knows what he wants, he will find the pair of pants in the colour he wants (usually), and pays for them. Sometimes he even stops to try them on…sometimes.
If you want readers to be interested you have to have to keep your writing short, descriptive, and to the point.
A common way of going about it is splitting up your content into a few easy to read parts:
- An introduction to the area, explaining where the vacation property is located, and what makes the area special.
A brief description of the cabin, for example*:
This two-bedroom, two- bath, 1000-square-for gem is located on the edge of Policeman’s Creek and wetland, just a five-minute walk from the heart of Canmore, Alberta. Entrance is through a courtyard that offers quiet privacy. The bright, open living room and dining area boast hardwood floors, a gas fireplace, and a deck that provides stellar views of the surrounding peaks any time of day or night.
- A list of amenities including: Golf Course, Pool, Kitchen, Dishwasher, Washer/Dryer, Air Conditioning etc. You may also want to add if you allow pets in this section.
- Some nearby attractions: Not all websites will include attractions. Some websites even list these with their amenities. I find that if you list nearby activities like hiking trails, shopping centers, and famous landmarks along with a few corresponding links a lot of guests will feel more comfortable with renting your property because they feel more familiar with the area.
Keep the introduction and description brief, two paragraphs at most. No one really wants to read two pages about how the sun sparkles through the kitchen window.
List all the amenities your property features and as many of nearby attractions as possible in point form. By keeping these features in point form it will be easier for guests to read and highlight the amenities they are interested in.
Do not forget to make your contact information readily available and easy to read. The same goes for your rental rates. The easier they are to read the better.
Using pictures to paint…a picture
Equally as important as writing a few descriptive paragraphs is featuring some nice photos of the property. It is easy for anyone to write about their rental and say they have a beautiful beachfront cottage with six bedrooms, but if you cannot supply a few pictures to go with your words not everyone will believe you. Humans are visual, and more likely to trust a website with corresponding pictures.
Now, don’t get me wrong, lots of pictures is good, great even, but here is the problem with most of the pictures I find on vacation rental websites…THEY ARE MASSIVE! The maximum you ever want to make pictures on your vacation rental website is 500px by 500px (6.5″ by 6.5″). Using a software package like Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great way to resize your photos.
Giant pictures mean huge file sizes, huge file sizes mean long load times, and no one wants to wait for a picture of the 2nd bathroom to load, especially if it going to take five minutes. I’m sorry to say but the Internet has made us pretty impatient.
Organizing your content to paint a clear picture.
A plan of attack is always necessary when organizing content for your vacation rental website. You have to ask yourself what is most important and order your content accordingly. If I am setting up a vacation rental website in a one page format I like to order my content as follows:
- Contact Information
- About the location
- Rental description
- Rental Rates
- Featured Amenities
- Nearby Locations
- Rental Rates
- Contact Information
You might notice that rental rates and contact information is on the list twice. That is because knowing how much the rental costs and how to contact the owner is the most important on the page, and you want to make it as easy as possible for a guest to book your vacation rental.
If I were to use the multiple page layout for a vacation rental website I would order my menu links as follows:
- Home
- Rates
- Rental Description
- Amenities
- Nearby Locations
- Contact Information
EXAMPLE OF MULTIPLE PAGE MENU LAYOUT
With this format, you usually order your links in order of importance. I like to put the contact information as the last link because I place the contact information on every page. You still want contact to have its own page just in case someone over looks the other locations.
Writing out the order of what you would like to do on paper is a good way to make your work flow more easily. By doing so you forgo any extra headaches about what goes where, and why. This can also help if you are getting someone else to build the website for you. They will have a clear map of what you need done, and it will be done more efficiently.
Tomorrow we will go over some basic Do’s and Don’ts as it pertains to building your vacation rental website. Along with going over a few basic tips and tricks to building you first website the right way so that your website not only looks good, but is easily searchable by search engines.
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