There are a lot of tools and resources out there to help you with your web site.  First is your friends or your customers.  Ask them to look at your web site and give you an honest opinion on how easy is it to navigate, find your phone number or and find your email address.  Does your site talk about you? What are you an expert in? Why should your customer book through you?  Have them tell you why they didn’t book with you.  Second is recourses on the internet…Feedback Roulette  is an easy and fun way to exchange feedback about websites. You review others’ websites and they review yours.

What makes Feedback Roulette unique?

1. It Endorses Quality Feedback: The system of ratings encourages participants to give quality feedback, so that they get useful feedback themselves.
2. Reviews are Anonymous: Since all the reviews on Feedback Roulette are anonymous, people can express themselves freely and be honest in their opinion. This also has a positive impact on feedback quality.
3. You Get Feedback from Peer Experts: Most users of Feedback Roulette are webmasters, designers, internet marketers and other people involved with Web.
4. It’s Guaranteed: You are guaranteed to receive feedback and you control the quantity of reviews you receive.
5. It’s Free: Feedback Roulette is free to use.
6. It’s Easy: Anyone can use Feedback Roulette. No special skills required. You can get started in a matter of seconds.
7. It’s Fun: You review others’ websites and receive Feedback Points for your reviews.

Have you used Feedback Roulette? Let us know your thoughts!

1.  John logs into Agent SociaLink and clicks on “Get Started Now” under Build A Blog.

2.  John follows the prompts and fills in the blanks to customize his blog post.

3.   After filling in all the blanks, John hits the “Submit” button to get the fully crafted blog post.  He copies and pastes it over to his WordPress blog.

4.  Since John has integrated his blog posts to update his Facebook fan page, the post automatically appears on his agency’s wall and an update is sent out to all his Facebook followers.

5.  John is a NexCite customer, so we’ve automatically embedded links within his blog post.  Whether a customer sees his article from his blog or facebook, these links will drive the customer back to the Red Bird Vacations website, where they can contact John to book their next cruise.

We’re still looking forward to hearing all your feedback on Agent SociaLink and can’t wait to hear the stories about all our agents booking travel through their social media marketing!

Contact us for more details on Agent SociaLink and stay tuned for more examples!

Agent SociaLink is a proprietary website designed by Passport’s own marketing, customer service and support teams.  The new tool provides content from a variety of sources allowing agents to pick and choose information to add to social media outlets including Twitter, Blogs and Facebook.

The “Build a  Blog” feature, uses a simple fill in the blank format. Agents can create blogs on specific cruise ships, complete with ship photos and specific information preloaded and customize with their own comments and information.

Subscribers to Agent SociaLink do not have to be users of Passport’s VacationPort or NexCite agent-branded, consumer-facing website programs.  But for VacationPort and NexCite users, content created through Agent SociaLink can also be integrated with VacationPort and NexCite. So those agents who are already Passport Online customers will have links embedded to relevant deals within their system. Consumers will be able to click on those deals and be directed to the agent’s website.

With the Agent SociaLink program participating agents receive:

• Real-time, updated links to online popular travel related articles.  Quickly glance at a list of headlines to find a story that is interesting to you or your clients and with a click of a button you can share that story with all your followers on Twitter or Facebook. 
• “Build a Blog Post” to guide agents through the creation of unique blog posts within minutes.  Simply follow the prompts to craft an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) enhanced blog post, complete with links to corresponding offers on the agency website.  Once the blog post is constructed, click on the button, copy and paste the custom post over to your blog and publish.
• Access to our Supplier Guest Blogs.  These blog posts are provided to Passport Online from our top suppliers in all product categories.  Suppliers will deliver interesting informational blogs which can be customized to use directly on an agency blog or Facebook page.  For Passport Online VacationPort or NexCite customers, links to supplier offers on their agency websites will automatically be embedded within the posts.
• Customer support and training on how to most effectively use these new media channels.

Pricing for existing Passport Online customers is $25 per month. For non-Passport Online customers it is $45 a month. For further information on the new Agent SociaLink product, contact us today at socialink@passportonlineinc.com

Agent testimonials:

“The Build a Blog and Supplier Guest Blogs are outstanding! Fantastic topics to build on easily and most importantly you are able to quickly create new blogs in a short amount of time. Plus the option of choosing a specific supplier to blog on is impressive.  This is a Win!” said Jennifer L. Smith, Branch Manager, Wings Travel Group

 “I enjoy the the product – the ease of use, simplicity of functionality, and the choice of content,” said Dennis Miller, MBA, CEO and Director of Human Resources, DJM Travel & Cruise, Inc. 

 “ I love it.  I don’t have to think about what to post.  I just look at the topics and pick one in the am and maybe one in the pm.  I have had people tag on to some of them and even share one of them.  That was a first.  I like the link back to the web site,”

Joan Follmann, CruisePlanners

New Website Offers Content Database, Build A Blog, Facebook & Twitter Feeds

Our Focus Group members went straight to work using the SociaLink content to add excitement to their social media networks.  Joan Follmann used our Supplier Guest Blog tool to market Abercrombie & Kent on her blog and Facebook fan page.  Check out the screen shots below to see how she did it!

1.  Joan logs into Agent SociaLink and selects the A&K Guest Blog post.

2.  Joan copies and pastes the article into her own blog.

3.  The post is published to her blog, where it can get picked up by the search engines and viewed by consumers.  She also has her blog importing to her Facebook fan page, where all her followers will see it show up in their news feed.

4.  Since Joan is a Passport Online customer, Agent SociaLink has automatically imbedded links within the article to direct potential customers back to Joan’s website.  From there, they can contact her to book their next A & K vacation.

We’re looking forward to see what our Focus Group members have to say.  If all goes well, we will be launching Agent SociaLink to the public next week.  Stay tuned for updates!

•  Traveling is good for the soul and spirit. If you are ready for your next travel experience, we are here to make it happen.
• Window shopping is fun no matter what you are shopping for! So if today you are shopping for travel, we’re here to tempt your senses and help you dream. And if you want to move from shopping to buying, we’re ready to make your dreams reality.
• Travel is experience. Put our experience to work for you. We have been around the globe. We’ll help make your next trip a life time experience.
• So glad you came here to begin your next travel experience. We love using our expertise to help our customers truly see the world.
• Welcome to our digital travel store. We are so glad to have you exploring the world with us today. We want you to know we have live travel experts ready and waiting to share their experience and create your next vacation. Click around and explore, and we’ll do the rest!

According to tnooz, the study (of nearly 2,800 US travel buyers in the US) found that 57% will only wait three seconds before abandoning a site if it has failed to load properly.  TravelPulse cites that Sixty-five percent of 18 to 24 year olds expect a site to load in two seconds or less. A third of travelers would be less likely to visit a site after experiencing technical problems like slowness or errors on the page.

Making your website easy to navigate and quick to load is absolutely essential to retain your customers.  Here are a few quick tips on how to ensure your NexCite runs up to speed:

• Make sure you are using less than 20MB of space within your Images and Files storage inside your NexCite admin
• Only use one slide show per page on your NexCite
• Make sure your banner image is less than 50KB
• Don’t litter your pages with flashing 3rd party ads (one of the biggest culprits for increasing page load time)
• Create pages with your customer in mind and don’t make them think.  Direct call to actions and logical navigation will allow them an easy shopping experience, one that leads to more booking.

NexCite is designed to run light and fast.  Follow these tips and you won’t need to worry about your customers abandoning your website.  As always, we are here to help.  Get in touch with our Support Team if you would like any other suggestions on how to keep your site optimized for the travel consumer.

Since the home page is valued so highly, it also tends to be the page that is most easily destroyed.   Many times the home page turns into a catch all for supplier brand logos, miscellaneous ad style banners, and random phrases hinting at something but never fully explained. 

Do you ever find yourself saying “This button is important, but I don’t really have any place to put it… so I guess I’ll just put it on the home page.”?  That is a slippery slope and one that leads to homepages that look like this:

Without a clean, concise homepage, your customer will be confused by what to do next and you may lose them before they even have time to discover what your business is all about.  It’s time to stop hoarding on your home page and give it the make-over it deserves.

4 Key Concepts for a Clutter-Free Homepage

Answer the question: Why do people want to book travel through you?

• What’s the benefit in using YOUR agency over another?
• Most people have become accustomed to booking their own vacations, take some time to explain exactly what the consumers receives when the book through a travel agent.

Get Personal

• People want to connect and build relationships, give them a little personal flavor so they can accomplish that.  A quick sentence about why you’re in the travel industry or how the agency got started works well.
• If you don’t want your website to show your personality, add links to your social media accounts (like facebook and twitter) so that your customers can get their fun, personal fix from your company there.

Call to Action

• Don’t make your customer think.  Tell them what they need to do.  
• Use call to actions like “Book your Vacation Now! Call for the best rates! Plan your next trip!  Search our Vacation Offers!”
• Make sure your call to action appears on the first screen, above the fold.

Establish and Reinforce your Expertise

• Add a customer testimonial, credentials, years in business, etc.
• People want to know they are buying from a trusted expert.

Need an example?  Take a look at these homepages for inspiration:

If you need a refresher on how to edit pages and make changes to your website, take one of our weekly NexCite Orientation webinars.   As always, feel free to contact us in the support department if you need any help.

We have been working hard to expand our selection of Canadian suppliers to offer our northerly neighbors equally compelling content. We are pleased to announce that we have created two new Global Offer Groups dedicated to cruises with Canadian pricing.

• Celebrity Exciting Deals Canada
• Royal Caribbean Sales Event Canada

These two groups will populate every Thursday with the appropriate CAD pricing, instead of USD. They are available for you to promote on your website now!

Some of you may be asking, “what is an offer group?” and “how can I use an offer group to promote specials on my site?”   If that’s the case, then you don’t want to miss our Open Q + A webinar on May 18th (10am PST). We will show you examples of how to use offer groups and target searches to promote your preferred offers on your website.

Has this statement ever come out of your mouth?   One of our most requested tasks is to get travel agents’ websites to rank number one for search terms like “cruises.”   

They don’t usually like to hear our answer to that request. 

Despite all the SPAM you see promising to get your site to the first page of Google, the honest truth is that it is REALLY REALLY hard to rank number one for “cruises.”  But, you do have the ability to rank well for some other search terms.

Think locally for a minute. 

Think about all the potential customers you have in your town who don’t know about you yet.  Think about what their first step is going to be to find a travel agent.  That’s right, they are going to go straight to Google and type in “Travel Agent, ______ (your town and/or state here)”.

There is no reason why your agency shouldn’t be ranking in the top ten for that specific local search term.  Registering your agency with Google Local Business is your first step to ensuring your rightful place on the first page of Google.  Here’s how you do it: 

1.  Go to the Google Local Business Center and login with your google account (if you don’t have one yet, sign up – it’s free)
2. Click on Add New Business
3. Enter in business information, choose Travel Agency as your main category
4. Click on Add Listing
5. Enter in Hours, add photos, select payment options, and add any additional information
6. Select validation preference (PLEASE NOTE: phone call verification will only work if an actual human answers the phone.  No automated systems!) and click on Finish

Once your verification has been completed (either via a phone call or postcard), your local business and website will be successfully registered with Google.   Give the search bots a couple weeks to crawl the web and you should start seeing your agency’s rank improve when you search for “Travel Agent, ______”.

If you already subscribe to our Supplier Highlight Pages, this content has been updated for you automatically.  If not…

Supplier Highlight Pages are a great way to add regularly updated content to your website, without having to make any changes yourself. The Supplier Highlight Pages are managed by Passport Online on behalf of the individual suppliers.

Want us to add Supplier Highlight Pages to your NexCite? Simply fill out our Supplier Highlight Page request form and we will add them.