Design Your Own Website
Once you've mastered a few skills, you can create a basic website. But making a site that works effectively and brings traffic to your door is a bit more challenging.
The real benefit of designing your own site is that it gives you complete control over its content and appearance. Plus, after it's completed, you won't be dependent on a professional web designer to make every little change or update to your site... you'll be able to do it yourself.
Using a website design program such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage allows you to create an attractive and functional website. The downside is... it's a steep learning curve to master these programs. Learning how to incorporate more technical features such as availability calendars, contact forms and other tools important to marketing your vacation rental takes time.
But if you're ready for the challenge of doing it yourself, here's some help to get you started.
To Do List
- Obtain and learn how to use a web design program that meets your needs.
- Sign up for a web hosting account.
- Learn how to make your site search engine friendly.
- Create a site map of your web pages on paper first.
- Write the text content for each page or hire a website copywriter to do so.
- Choose and register your domain name (eg. www.myhomerental.com).
- Construct your site.
- Promote your site.
- Continually fine tune your site, updating the content and adding new info.
Important Web Design Points
- Keep your design simple and professional looking.
- Keep the flow/navigation easy to use.
- Make your site search engine friendly.
Roadblocks To Successful Site Design And Launch
Roadblock 1 - A too-complex graphic design. People spend months designing their site and some of them never get it launched because they are not happy with the appearance, the logo, the photos, the colors, etc. Forget it. Get over it. Simple is better. Don't use flash or other fancy design features. Just put together a basic, professional-looking, clean design and get it online and working for you. You can always come back and add the little extras later.
Roadblock 2 - Your site might stop people at the door. The graphics might be overwhelming, or visitors don't know where to go due to unclear navigation. Or they may never find your site in the first place because you ignored search engine considerations.
The two main goals of your site should be to present your vacation rental in the best light possible and to ensure your site can be found on search engines.
Even if your site consists of simple text and photos, if it's properly optimized it could easily out-perform more elaborate sites.
Pros and Cons of Designing Your Own Website
Pros
- You have total control, limited only by how much you know about web design and marketing
- You can make changes whenever you want and not have to wait for a busy web designer.
Cons
- The design process can be slow for a beginner and there's lots to learn before you can get started.
- If you aren't a professional designer, you might not be able to build the latest tools into your site.
- You will also need to do all the associated tasks yourself... like selecting a good web host, registering a domain name, and submitting to the search engines.
Not quite ready to tackle the job? There are two other ways to get a website:
1. Hire and/or work with a website designer.
2. Use SiteProPlus.com free website design tools.
Let's begin by examining the first option... hiring a professional designer.
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