1. Put social media buttons on every page of the site, and make them easily visible. Include: Twitter, FacebookFan Page, Blog and Flickr Group Pool, http://www.flickr.com/help/groups
2. Post Itineraries – those based on travel interests are always helpful: families, outdoor adventure, history, culture, foodie, native culture sites for starters.
3. Create custom Google Maps focused on trails (food, history, etc. as above.)
4 Mobile, mobile, mobile! You need to be all over mobile-friendly. If you have the ressources, create and deploy some applications for iphone, BlackBerry and Android. Make sure you are visible on mobile search apps like http://taptu.com/a/main
5. Incorporate music. For instance, create and post “suggested playlists” (make them on Amazon and iTunes and link to them from your site). DO NOT use music that auto-starts and makes people want to leave your site.
Examples: _NG Traveler destination-themed playlists: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/resources/downloads.html __The UK's "Guardian" - 50 songs for 50 states - http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/sep/14/usa.roadtrips?page=all
6. Interactive suggestions: a. Post user-generated videos – include a place where visitors can post their own videos about their trips. b. If you have the staffing resources, add a live chat feature. It gives people real time information and a sense of a live person listening and responding to potential visitors. It needn't be staffed 24 x 7, but it can also be an effective booking tool if you are offering reservations on the site.
7. Consider online search and live inventory of your regions tourism products. Instead of long chains of drop down categories folks can visit your site and search for what they want to do/see and ideally book it.
8. Features lots of video, photo and even virtual tours - Visuala will inspire people. You can even do interactive presentations that includes video, photos, maps, weather, virtual tours and all linked with an interactive map.
9. You might also want to consider a dedicated landing page with filtered social media content, as this will be very search-friendly and also enable visitors to easily see and participate in ongoing conversations about your destination.
10. Consider making it a multilingual site and making it possible to see costs in different currencies.
· Posted by vca
on 02/14/2010 04:41 ·
0 Comments ·
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