subject: Bed And Breakfast Website Design - Why Give Away Control? [print this page] Your bed and breakfast website design and content is one of the most important areas of your business. More and more people are searching the internet for their accommodation so getting it wrong can cost you a lot of money.
Yet most bed and breakfast owners give control of their website to someone else. Someone who they hardly know and who, at best, knows very little about the market place.
Ah, you say, "but I've used a free online website builder for my bed and breakfast" or "I pay $xx a month and do it all myself". You think you've got control? Really?
What happens if your host decides to show adverts (completely unrelated to your accommodation business) every time someone visits your site? You potential customer is distracted. Probably so ticked off that he or she just goes elsewhere. So you pay a monthly fee to prevent adverts being shown, but who says that monthly fee will stay the same? Worse, the search engines don't really like most of those sites very much so your chances of showing up in a decent position are virtually nil.
Does that mean that for proper, effective bed and breakfast website design you have to go to the professionals? Well you might be giving up control of an important asset, but at least these guys and gals know what they're doing, right?
I'm certainly not going to knock website designers - it's how I made a comfortable living for years - but the truth is that what we do is a balance between what the client (you) wants and what's cost-effective to produce. The client always wants more for their money, the designer has to have profit in mind - they're in business too!
If they're any good you should be happy with the results - but how effective is your site? It might look great to you but how does it look to Google - where it really matters? What will it cost you to change it or update it in a couple of months time. What if you don't like it? What will it cost to move to another web designer?
So what's the solution?
Understandably most people are cautious about buying software and doing it themselves. Most people don't want to do their own bed and breakfast website design because they're concerned about their ability to turn out a professional looking result. You certainly don't want to look amateurish.
Fortunately today you don't have to. Modern content management systems allow you to host your own site, build it and maintain it for a fraction of what you would pay a website designer - in fact for less than you would pay anywhere except the free sites. You'll get power, ease of use and, most importantly, you retain control. You don't have to worry about complex programs, html or php. If you can point, click and type a little you have all the skills you need!
Bed And Breakfast Website Design - Why Give Away Control?
