InsideOut Solutions
Rack card and business card designs for Garden House, Key West, FL
Catering to the Key West crowd
Key West is a favorite spring break destination and Garden House has just the right vibe for this fun-loving crowd. Garden House owners John and Connie Manasco worked with InsideOut to create a great website that’s fun and easy-to-use. Next, they needed print pieces for visitors to pick up and keep. They turned to InsideOut to design a rack card and business card that matched their site.
We launched two new sites last week that are as different as they could be. Whale Bay Charters has a new WordPress site for their Alaskan Boat Charters, and the Blair House Inn, an extensive B&B in Texas Hill Country, also has a large new HTML-based site.
The New Blair House Inn Web Site
The Blair House Inn is a unique property, and it was an exciting challenge to incorporate their interesting business model into an attractive & functional site.
They have one of the most popular cooking schools in the nation. The food network came to Wimberley to film a segment on their unique “BBQ Camp”. They have a a popular series of classes that includes themed regional cooking, like Italian or French.
We wanted to build a site which would allow viewers to easily move through the products and services offered at the Blair House. The Hill Country Inn also has an art gallery on-site, where local and national artists’ work is displayed. We used beautiful pictures of the inn and the work there to convey the anomalous feeling at the inn: laid-back Texas style, gourmet dining, art & education!
We also included a blog to assist in search engine optimization for the site. By allowing the staff and innkeepers to make new content on the site on a regular basis, the site remains a vital and changing place, that reflects the activity that is happening at the inn.
Speaking of blogs, we launched a WordPress-based site for Whale Bay Charters, a one-man boat charter business that sets sail from Gustavus Alaska for about a dozen private charter trips every summer. They are geared towards families and marine mammal viewing. But not just any little seal, Captain Mike Braal brings his vessel the Exodus through the Icy Strait to the feeding grounds of humpback whales.
Whale Bay Charters New Web Site
When Mike came to us, he felt that no one had ever found his Alaska Boat Charters via his web site online. He had a limited budget, but we were able to make a site that could change and shift almost as much as the ocean he sailed. Through the power of WordPress, we made a low-cost, high-efficiency site that would allow Mike to update and change the information on his regular pages as the seasons change, as well as include a photo blog area where he and his guests can share their wildlife photography from the week-long trips.
As always, both of these sites were built with great Search Engine Optimization in mind, and according to the office manager over at Blair House Inn, they are seeing an increase in traffic and bookings already.
It has been a fun and busy week here at InsideOut Solutions as we wrap up our week of five launches in five days.
Homespun Country Inn is located is pastoral Nappanee Indiana. A diverse community that is known for automobile manufacturing (formerly Rvs, now flat-bed electric trucks) and, on the other end of the scale, a large Amish population, makes this area a draw for both tourism and business travel alike.
Nappanee has a modest population of just under 7000, so it was important the Homespun Country Inn was able to establish themselves not only as a bed and breakfast for leisure travel, but also as a lodging property that would appeal to travelers that would normally look for a hotel in Nappanee.
The Homespun Country Inn New Website
The former website was far from achieving this goal. Dated, and rather unappealing, they were suffering from a high bounce rate of about 37%, with users spending an average of less than 3 minutes on the site, looking at less than 3 pages. Rooms photos we tiny, and unclear. The web site made the inn seem small, stuffy and unattractive.
What a difference a few hi-resolution photos and a great destination marketing team can do! The site now reflects the charm and beauty of the inn. The Homespun Country Inn has seen it’s bounce rate drop 25%, visits have increased by 16%, pageviews are up 156% and time on site is up 28%, just in the few days since the new site has been live. Wow! This is why our clients love our site designs: they are beautiful, effective marketing tools that allow the user to have a positive experience and the innkeeper to watch their ranking and reservations increase.
Your web site is your first impression, and according to recent web search surveys and a webinar from marketing guru Trent Blizzard, the higher and more often you are found on the Internet, the better the perception of your business (source). So don’t let your web site give the impression that your business is old, dated, somewhat broken, messy, cluttered, or, heaven forbid, ugly. A new site design is the first step in making sure you are ahead of the curve in todays’ travel and destination marketing environment. Don’t get left in the dust!
In sticking with our plan for the week, we launched our fourth new website this week. Hamilton House Estate is an elegant property in Hot Springs Arkansas, specializing in luxury lodging and stunning Hot Springs weddings.
On a peninsula in Lake Hamilton, the Estate as a breathtaking view of the Lake and surrounding area. We were so delighted to create a design for the Estate that would give visitors an impression of what it was like to really be at the inn.
We used cool colors and gentle florals to make the site feel appealing and approachable. The old design was rigid, and we wanted the web site to convey to potential guests and brides that Hamilton House is committed to their guests’ comfort and enjoyment on the lake.
Hamilton House Estate, Hot Springs Inn & Wedding Facility
Adding a Google map to the directions page allowed users to instantly access driving directions, reviews and other information about the property and the area from Google maps.
We re-vamped their wedding page to include all new and relevant local services and vendors that a bride may be looking for. Their Hot Springs Wedding packages are listed clearly, and there is a downloadable PDF for brides or event planners who want more details.
The Hamilton House website now optimized and designed to current web standards while giving the visitor a better and more accurate impression of this exceptional property.
Hacienda Vargas is a very special property. A beautiful adobe structure built in traditional Spanish style with a large courtyard, innkeepers Cynthia and Richard have done a wonderful job maintaining the estate. Located in a tiny town called Algodones, the inn is smack dab in between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, along the historic El Camino real.
Hacienda Vargas’ old web site had almost no large photos of the inn, rooms or wedding chapel. Cynthia & Richard provided new photos, many of them from former guests, which gave the site a very authentic feel.
Because of Vargas’ unique wedding facilities (that includes a 200-year-old Adobe chapel), we wanted to give this aspect of their business a bigger presence on the new site than before. The wedding page now shares photos from intimate ceremonies in the ancient chapel, as well as photos for large events in their lush green courtyard.
New site design for Hacienda Vargas in Santa Fe New Mexico
We helped the innkeepers to clearly outline what was included in their wedding packages, so that potential brides would have clear information about weddings at Hacienda Vargas.
Because Hacienda Vargas is about half an hour from both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and Algodones is such a small town, Hacidena Vargas is interested in ranking online for Santa Fe and Alburquerque bed and breakfast terms. So for their area page, we encouraged the innkeepers to tell us about their guests favorite attractions, recreation and things to do in these cities. This content will help their placement for these city terms.
Over a long process of collaboration with designer Beth Logan, we are proud to present bed and breakfast website number 3 for the week.
A recent article from Marketing Prof reminded me that all testimonials are not equal.
Holly Buchanan opens a post at the FutureNow blog with a pair of seemingly contradictory ideas: that testimonials work very well and that they don’t work at all. Both are true, she argues, because customer praise can be a two-edged sword: If it appears inauthentic or doesn’t offer true insight, it can actually have a negative impact.
According to Buchanan, effective testimonials:
The Po!nt: Not all testimonials are created equal. “Testimonials hurt you when people don’t think they’re real,” says Buchanan. “Anything that sounds vague or cliché can smack of insincerity.”
Again, this gives greater importance to the authentic reviews that are so important to all the hospitlaity industry. Encourge your guest and customers to write reviews on inn or product because their review will carry more crediability weight than an out of context testimonial.
Old design vs. new business card design for Lookout Point
Business card update for luxury inn
Lookout Point Lakeside Inn (Hot Springs, Arkansas) was nearly out of business cards. Before reprinting them, co-owner Kristie Rosset asked InsideOut to take a look at the card and see if it needed “freshening up.” The original card was easy-to-read, but it didn’t capture the sophistication of Lookout Point. After receiving our feedback, Kristie decided it was time for a redesign.
The Rosevine Bed and Breakfast & Guest House web site has been a work in progress for many months now.
Our lead designer Beth Logan worked with Innkeepers Rebecca and Burt Powell to maintain some of the stylistic attributes of the original site while creating something completely new. As we remind innkeepers over and over again, your website is your most important marketing tool, so it is not something that should become rusty or outdated. As you can see from the screen shots below, Rosevine’s old site was designed before screens had started to become larger, and it’s slim width shows it’s age.
The Old Rosevine site
Our new design for Rosevine bed and breakfast
Rosevine has both bed and breakfast rooms, as well as extended stay suites. They asked us to design a web site that would allow visitors to clearly learn the difference between the two, and feature them both in an attractive and user-friendly manner.
The Rosevine property has a variety of amenities and facilities for guests to enjoy. This Tyler Bed and breakfast also has a game room inside of a large red barn, an outdoor hot tub, and various field sports/outdoor recreation.
We created a web site that would easily navigate the visitor through all the information they would need before coming to stay at the inn or suites, and what was included in these different lodging options. The site is also current with the most recent web standards for great Search Engine Placement.
InsideOut Solutions is busier than a short order cook on Sunday morning.
We are going to be launching one new site every day this week!
New web site for Arsenic & Old Lace B&B Eureka Springs AR
The first is an old and much beloved client, Arsenic and Old Lace, an Arkansas Bed and Breakfast in Eureka Springs.
Doug was ready for a refresh of his site; he has beautiful photos of his unique property and romantic Eureka Springs Wedding facility. We made the navigation simpler and easier to use, as well as changed some basic elements of his site for better Search Engine Optimization.
Doug & Beverly are now keeping an active blog on their site. The blog gives them a chance to keep visitors to the site abreast with current happenings and events at Arsenic & Old Lace as well as Eureka Springs in general.
Look forward to more beautiful new sites in this week; one every day!
Trifold brochure for new Olympic Peninsula marketing strategy
Bridge closure inspires new directions in marketing…
The Hood Canal Bridge is the main eastern access for tourists visiting Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. This spring, the bridge underwent a much needed retrofit, resulting in a five-week closure. The local tourism organization, Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission (OPTC), took special measures to promote lodging and other tourism-related businesses while the bridge was closed.Â
Among these efforts was a brochure directed to southern markets in Olympia, WA and Portland, OR. OPTC called upon InsideOut to design the piece and implement the online elements of the promotion. With the success of this piece, OPTC may use it as a template for additional pieces targeting markets to the north and east.
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