Hi all,
We rent out our house for the summer and are with French Country Cottages and French Connections but would like to have our own website. Can anybody offer any help on how to go about this or recommend someone who could design one for us? Also, when we moved here 10 years ago, we closed all our English bank accounts, bringing all our monies with us and thinking we would never need an English account again. (really wish we had'nt now but life was different then!!), so obviously all payments need to be by bank transfer to our French account, or has anyone any other suggestions ? Thanks in advance.
Thanks everyone for your helpful suggestions/ideas! At the moment we have decided to wait until early next year to create a web site/blog as we have quite a few bookings this summer.
You have all been really helpful and I do really appreciate al your recommendations.
Warmest regards
Rosemary
Hi Rosemary, there are a couple of ways to incorporate a blog. We can discuss options for doing this and how you go about promoting your website and blog. Why don't you drop me a line on my email at brianstephens@moulinwebsitedesign.com and I can provide you with a few options for getting an affordable package together. It really shouldn't cost that much for a relatively simple site that includes a blog.
Your blog can sit on your site, or you can create one with a blogging service like Blogger. The trick is to fill your blogs with quality content relevant to your business and make sure it all links to where you want people to find that great content.
This is a site that belongs to a client and SFN member with some nice gîtes in Brittany who's just created a nice blog post on her site about a music festival nearby http://www.lostinfinistere.com/blog.html
Thanks everyone, Brian would you be able to give me a price on designing a website for us and advise me on what I can do to make our farmhouse stand out in rainy Normandie!! I shall stay with the letting agents but OH and I still fill we do need our own website.Also, how do I go about creating a blog???
Thanks
Hi Rosemary
I'd agree with all the info given so far. But I'd also start with a question: what do I want to achieve with my own website? I suspect ultimately you'd like to increase your bookings but creating your own site on its own probably won't do that. However linked in with an overall marketing plan which will take into consideration your social media presence, your listings on other websites, your blogs, your local networking etc it probably will.
If you're really keen to find out about web marketing this book's a good read Digital Marketing
Brian will give you a better idea but I'd budget about €200 per year for someone to put together then maintain and host a wordpress (or similar) site. This is a very rough figure, but I'd definitely advise having someone do it for you unless you're particularly savvy in this field.
In terms of transfers into a French account, that shouldn't put anyone off these days. My UK business and personal accounts offer this service online at competitive exchange rates and for a small fee (£5 I think) or you could get your web designer to integrate paypal or google checkout into your site which is even easier for customers but will cost you maybe 3% or so.
Hope this all helps :)
Brian is quite right, a site and blog is key. Try to get to grips with basic SEO techniques, to learn why it is important.
I would also start a 'Community' FB page on your area, tourist info, pics etc., and as the followers grow you can copy yout URL into the 'Comments'... Free Advertising to an audience that likes your region.
Link from your site to the FB Page too.
I design websites and offer various options for creating your own websites at a reasonable cost. But if you are computer savvy you can create a reasonably good website by searching for independentowners.com who provide a really good facility for creating a holiday home website for free.
Alternatively you can do as already suggested and advertise on major holiday letting agents site.
Bottom line is you need to know how to market and optimize your own website to make any real gains into the search engine results, but your own website can be great in that you can add as much information on there as you like with no constraints and run a blog off it as well for regular updates and information for potential customers.
My recommendation is do both, have your own website/blog and advertise on a recommended letting agents site to ensure you get a reasonable amount of enquiries.
Hope that helps
We let our apartment in the Languedoc out...via Owners Direct....when we originally joined them we looked at our own website...which we duly had produced and put on line...to date...we rent out about 20 plus weeks a year...never once have we managed to do that via our own website....! you may find it helps to just go with one or two agents to begin with...and if that isnt enough...get your own website...not sure what others think..but we found it a bit of a waste of time and money...
Thanks Yvonne I have sent Marion a message. x
Hi Rosemary, we recommend Marion Ryan at http://onlinebusinessgym.com who will build you a Wordpress website using our proven template, with an online booking system which takes deposit payments while you're away doing something else. Over 90% of my B&B bookings are online now.
When your website is built, you'll need to learn about marketing, and I can show you my system which enabled me to quadruple my revenue in less than a year. Let me know what else you need :-) Yvonne