Newsletter : APRIL 2006

Best Practices in Sustainable Tourism

New Zealand Tourism Online was recently asked to participate in an initiative called 'Best Practices in Sustainable Tourism Management for APEC Economies.' The actual purpose of this project is to put together all the best practices of sustainable tourism management from participating economies on a common learning platform. Each member economy can then shorten their learning curve by seeing what others have done.

The bigger objective is for APEC to achieve its sustainable tourism goals where all member economies move in one common direction. This entire project consists of the New Zealand Tourism Online initiative and 18 others from around the world. Information on these initiatives will be printed out in hard copies and circulated to all the member economies; and downloaded onto the APEC Web site. KEA Campers and Elm Wildlife Tours were the only other two businesses from New Zealand asked to put in a submission.

New look Web Sites

Did you know that New Zealand Tourism Online has four other active Web sites? These have recently been upgraded with new functionality and a complete design makeover. These sites profile tourism operators who have a listing on the main www.tourism.net.nz Web site.

Check them out now. Each one is dedicated to a section of the market i.e. accommodation, attractions, tours and transport.

New Zealand Accommodation Guide www.tourism.gen.nz

New Zealand Attractions Guide www.nzto.com

New Zealand Tours Guide www.newzealandtourism.co.nz

New Zealand Transport Guide www.nzto.co.nz

Get Your Site Visitor To Take Action

by Steph Kendall, Avatar Web Promotions

'Calls to action' can help you make the most of your Web pages. A strong and effective call to action should literally persuade a site visitor looking at your Web page to take action.

It pays to spend some time thinking carefully about what call to action you want on every single page of your Web site and what you really want people to do on your Web site. It's amazing how many companies forget that people need to know (and want to know) what to do next and get easily frustrated online when it's not super-obvious.

You can use calls to action, such as these listed, not only to get your customer to take action, but to help direct your customer around your Web site and encourage them to get off the home page and explore more of your Web site:

• Sign up to our newsletter
• Contact us for more information
• View more information about our accommodation special
• Book / email / phone now

Making Calls to Action More Effective
To make your calls to action stronger and more effective, you can incentivise your site visitor to take action. Incentivised calls to action can be styled like this:

• Sign up to our newsletter for free tips and advice on what there is to do in Christchurch.
• Book before the end of April and receive 3 nights for the price of 2!

Achieve Maximum Web Design Impact

by Steph Kendall, Avatar Web Promotions

When you talk to a Web designer about revamping an existing or building a new Web site, you may, or may not, have a vision of what you want in mind. If you do, you'll need to clearly communicate your vision. If you don't, talk to your Web designer, who should be able to inspire you!

Realising What You're Visualising
It's important to brief your designer as well as you can, because no matter how talented, creative or intuitive they are, there is every chance that what they create will be slightly different from what you first imagined. Some Web designers such as Avatar, start this briefing process with a Web design questionnaire. This questionnaire gives you the opportunity to tell your designer about your business and your target market, so they have a clear understanding of what you want from your Web site and what you like about Web sites.

Your Web designer should be aiming to give your business maximum impact on the Web. They may ask you to provide as much detail and material as possible to keep them on the right design lines. This material may include:

• Information about your target market (e.g. age, gender, income, marital status)
• High quality logo
• High quality, relevant and engaging images
• Well-written and proofed text
• References for fonts and colours (brand guidelines and style guides)
• Samples of your existing promotional material, such as brochures, business cards, postcards, letterhead
• Examples of design styles you particularly like (brochures, print ads or other Web sites)

Let Your Designer Do Their 'Thang'
Do let your designer 'design' your Web site. After all, that's the expertise, experience, creativity and technical know-how you're paying for.

Many designers will create a design concept or blueprint for your site, before they actually build it. A concept is a graphic representation of the look and feel of your site created using logos, navigation, text, images, buttons and icons in specific sizes, fonts and colours. Make sure you're happy with your site concept, because it can sometimes be a costly exercise to take down the nuts and bolts of a site that's already built to start again.