Selling Online - Tourism North East

Your Website: Selling Online

Online shopping

Remember that a good website will Display, Reassure, Motivate and Capture. Once you've got a customer to your site, and excited about what you offer, you need as few barriers to them actually buying as possible. The easier it is to buy the greater the chances of them turning from browsers to bookers.

The obvious first

Firstly, the obvious, easy options (although lots of businesses manage to overlook them!):

Phone numbers - put your landline and, if appropriate, mobile on every page, preferably on the top banner. Consider putting small box 'adverts', in the body of your pages that say something like "We're always happy to talk. To book, enquire or just ask some questions, call us on XXXX"
Email - not surprisingly, internet users like email as a contact method. Again, put your email address prominently on the top banner, and where appropriate, draw attention to it with a box as above. Also add your email as a clickable link in the text, eg: "To enquire about group prices, click here" where the 'click here' link will actually bring up a blank email with your address in the address bar.
Calls to Action - this just means that, throughout your site, wherever you describe a 'product' or motivate your customers, put a link that takes the user to your online shop, booking page, email link or enquiry form etc. So for example, if you're talking about how relaxing and peaceful your hotel is, finish up by saying something like. "If you'd like to come and get away from it all, click here for our enquiry form" or "Family tickets are on special offer right through October. Click here to book yours," "We cater for all ages and abilities, click here to email us with your enquiry." and so on.

E-commerce

The methods described above can easily be put on any website and are all ways of making sure you capture customer interest at your site. But there are more structured forms of e-commerce.

Secure forms

This is a method of capturing a request for a booking or purchase, that you then have to manually confirm and take payment for. A secure form is a form, on a secure server (so it cannot easily be hacked or read) with fields of your choice on it for the customer to fill in. The customer indicates their requirements using text, picklists, tickboxes etc, and these, along with the customer's contact details and possibly credit card details, are automatically securely emailed to you when the customer hits the Submit button. Usually there is no concept of stock or availability and no clever pricing methods - it's just a way to capture a customer's interest, and perhaps their card details, with a bit more structure than a blank email.

This method is easy and low-cost to implement, but doesn't offer you any options for publishing your availability, taking full online bookings or pushing your details and stock availability to other websites and marketing partners.

Online shops

Much more complex, these are usually stand alone facilities that can be 'plugged into' your site. You can describe your products, put in pictures and prices and indicate how much of something - the stock level, inventory or availabilty - you have. More flexible systems let you add discounts, postage, packing etc. The business usually has the choice of taking credit cards online (for a percentage fee) or taking the customer's credit card details, using a secure form, and processing payment in the normal way, offline. Online shop packages are widely available - do an online search for "e-commerce package" or "online shop package" to turn up some big, well known names. See also Desti.ne below.

Ticketing

There are a number of ticketing systems on the market that allow you to sell advance tickets, online, with or without online credit card processing. As with online shops you can indicate prices, discounts, group buys, offers etc. In addition, there is often the option for online delivery, either by the production of a uniquely generated code which can be redeemed at the attraction/event, or by the automatic production of a ticket or voucher that can be printed off by the customer. Again, type in "online ticketing system" or "advance ticketing system" and also see Desti.ne and Frontdesk below, for our own regional ticketing system.

Accommodation booking and availability systems

By far, these are the most complicated types of e-commerce system. They allow you to enter your establishment details and your availability so that it can be published online. Some systems allow you to publish this information at your own site, others are just a way for you to get your information into their site or to their booking agents.

The better systems are very flexible. They allow you to describe your establishment, rooms, units, facilities and directions etc and also to put in detailed pricing, discount, offer and availabilty information. Some require that you enter allocation - where you undertake not to sell the rooms/units yourself, unless you first take back the allocation or a portion of it - so that they can make fully automated bookings without checking with you first.

Not all systems take the money online. Some take the customer's credit card details as security, but you process the actual payment yourself, using your normal methods.

The cost of systems varies hugely. Some systems have an upfront and/or monthly fee plus a percentage share of each booking (anywhere from 2% - 25%). Others just charge a fee or a commission but not both.

The big problem has always been that most systems are 'tied' to a particular website (whether its yours or theirs) and don't 'talk' to anyone else. Your stand alone system, for example, will allow you to take online bookings at your own website, but if you want to work with anyone else, like your local Area Tourism Partnership or Active Hotels, you have to enter your details, availabilty and pricing into their systems as well. If you work with a number of partners - which you should do, to get the widest possible coverage - then you can end up entering your information again and again, to keep different sites up to date. And whenever you get a booking from one place you have to manually update the availability on all the other systems, to avoid double-booking.

Property Management Systems

More recently Property Management Systems (PMS) have been developed which hold your availability and establishment details and push them - distribute them - to many different places. They can talk to lots of different websites and systems, as well as providing online booking at your own site and a computerised reception package.

So instead of having to manually update your details to lots of different marketing partners, you use one system to seamlessly manage all your bookings. When you take a booking over the phone, or someone turns up, you enter it into your reception package and it automatically updates all the other channels you advertise on. And when you get an online booking from a partner website, not only do you instantly see it on your reception PC, but all the other places you advertise are updated as the booking is confirmed, so double-booking becomes impossible.

What's more, because the providers of these systems have developed relationships with lots of other marketing channels - like VisitBritain, lastminute.com, expedia, Active Hotels etc - you also can also choose for your details to be distributed to these websites as well.

Prices vary considerably for these systems and may include a monthly fee as well as a commission on each booking made through a marketing partner's channel.

Desti.ne and Frontdesk

One NorthEast Tourism, our regional tourism organisation, has been working with developers of these availability systems to create Desti.ne - our regional e-business system. Desti.ne allows details of tourism businesses all over the North East to be collected and published to a wide variety of online marketing channels, and also allows One NorthEast Tourism and the Area Tourism Partnerships to create websites and brochures from the information held.
The providers of Desti.ne also offer Frontdesk, for serviced and self-catering providers and also for attraction/events providers. These are property management systems just as described above and for many types of tourism business in our region, the costs are considerably subsidised. Even the smallest business can now harness the power of the internet: selling online and automatically distributing to lots of different channels.

In addition Frontdesk computerises your reception duties, collects customer details into a database, automates billing, processes credit cards, sends letters, emails and other communications to your customers (including marketing emails to your customer database) and provides powerful reporting on all aspects of your sales, customers and advertising.

For more information, to watch videos from businesses and customers using Desti.ne and to take a tour of the products, visit the Dest.ne website.

Taking money online

If you don't choose to use a system like Desti.ne or the Frontdesk you will have to look at how you take money online.

You can just take card details, using a secure form, that you then process offline, in your usual way. Or you may choose to have an account like PayPal that lets you take credit cards, bank transfers and other payments online. Paypal has become very widely known as the payment of choice through ebay, but Paypal, and other providers like them, also provide e-commerce and online payment systems directly to businesses. You can have both their online shop systems and payment mechanisms 'embedded' in your site, so they look like your own, or you can have a more obvious link to the Paypal login screen, just as when you buy something from ebay. Costs vary, but can be very competitive.

The final alternative is to have your own, online merchant account from one of the major banks. If you have a number of businesses, or you want a completely independent solution, then this may be the option for you. However, costs can be high, and it's very important that you get the most competitive credit card processing rate that you can. The best way to understand the implications of an online merchant account is to talk to your business bank manager. Or click here to see our Business Benefits Pack, which includes great offers on merchant services (online payment processing).

Go for the widest distribution

But remember that taking money online is only half the battle. Getting your information distributed to as many places as possible in order to get the widest coverage will bring the most customers to your door.

Next steps

Once you've settled on your preferred choice of e-commerce options, that's the planning over. Your next job is to get your site built - and for that, you will need some help.