Let’s start with an assumption: You can only measure how successful your marketing is by how many enquiries and bookings you have. So for every $1 you spend on marketing you would expect to see a % return in bookings or at least enquiries. And so it goes that the more you spend on marketing, the more bookings you get, assuming this rudimentary calculation holds true.

Still with me? Okay so what if I gave you a guaranteed way to increase your bookings without increasing your marketing spend. Would you be interested?

Of course you would … okay, so here it is … remove the speed traps and roadblocks that prevent customers reaching their goal ie making an enquiry or booking. By doing this you will turn the ‘nearly’ customers into paying customers.

So we’ve already established that you know how to measure enquiries and bookings but what about the ‘nearly’ enquiries, the ones you don’t even know about. The people that were interested enough to click on your site or pick up a leaflet but then went elsewhere to find that perfect Cape Town holiday Villa or guesthouse. You had them in the palm of your hand and you let them go! And unless you have some fantastic (still to be invented!) metrics that measure how many people were interested but left without converting you will never know just how many potential bookings you missed. Some may have gone elsewhere because you only had 2 en-suite bathrooms or your holiday accommodation wasn’t close enough to the beach. But many others will have left because they couldn’t get to where they wanted to go. There were speed bumps or roadblocks which stopped them reaching their goal. They may have wanted to make an enquiry but couldn’t find the button to click to do so (speed trap). They might have then found it, clicked, but instead of going to the contact page were taken to the photos page (speed trap). But lucky for you they were determined enough to eventually find the enquiry page, they completed the contact form, clicked send and nothing happened and they had no other way of contacting you (roadblock) … oh dear! You just lost a customer and you had no idea they were even looking.

This is just an example. But there are literally hundreds of potential speed bumps or roadblocks in every piece of marketing material you write, print, post or upload.

Let’s take a closer look at your marketing material, particularly your website (if you have one … if you don’t then tsk tsk!). Like many owners you are just so pleased to have a website at all … and if you’re from Cape Town then the less you paid for it the better you feel. Job done … cross that one off the list. Er … wrong! Did you know that around 80% of holidaymakers use the web to find and plan their holiday. And you only have to search yourself to realise that there is a lot of competition out there. Some great ‘tick all the boxes’ websites and some ‘why did they even bother’ websites. The fact is that an intelligently built and designed website that works for you is still the cheapest form of marketing you can have … and it’s all measurable. From who visited, to what they clicked to how long they spent on each page. So take the time to get it right … here’s just a few simple things you can do to iron out all the speed bumps and roadblocks and convert those ‘nearly’ enquiries into paying customers:

1. Clean up your navigation.
   One of the biggest reasons why people give up and look elsewhere is because they didn’t know how to find the information they were looking for. Make you navigation obvious and have the most important links bigger and bolder. Treat it like a hierarchy … the important things should be big and bold at the top and the not so important things should be smaller and at the bottom. Also don’t overload on navigation … don’t link to everything from anywhere, this will just confuse people. Make their user journey obvious and intuitive
2. Get your friends to help.
   Set your friends a task. It could be making an enquiry or looking at things to do for children or find and print details of how to get to your property. Then sit with them (silently) and watch what they do. Do they get stuck, do they click randomly, do they get bored and wander off to the kitchen for some tea. You will be amazed at the things they get stuck on. The general rule is if more than two of your friends hit the same problem, change it. (Tip: Ask your friends to be as honest as they can … by being brutally honest they are actually helping your business).
3. Layer your information.
   One of the biggest mistakes in any website is burying ‘all important’ information in long rambling (and often flowery) prose. Keep important information separate. Use lists for accommodation details such as number of rooms, facilities and features. The flowery narrative is non-essential information, sure it paints a picture BUT not reading it won’t be a speed bump or roadblock.
4. Contact information.
   Making an enquiry is your number one goal. Therefore have the contact button or details clearly in view at all times and make it obvious that this is how to contact the owner. Also try and include a telephone number (with international dialling codes) if possible. I would always recommend a contact form for enquiries … the two reasons for this are that you can include a CAPTCHA element to prevent nasty web robots crawling your site, picking up your email address and then bombarding you with unsolicited emails (SPAM). The second reason is that you can ask questions to save you time dealing with the enquiry such as number of guests, when they are arriving etc. But make the contact form concise .. people don’t want to give you their life story.
5. Good design and branding.
   Having a cheaply designed site might save a few quid in the short term but having a fantastic site will, in time, increase your bookings, streamline your business and give people ‘peace of mind’ that you are serious about what you do.

These are simple things you can do right away and trust me, they will make a difference. If you have further questions or want to get some more expert help to pick up those ‘nearly’ enquiries then contact those very nice people at zoofish.com. They are the best there is and they don’t charge the earth either .. they just make you look good and your business work.