Main content on the homepage for travel sites?

Hey,

Hoping to get some suggestions please :slight_smile:

I have a few travel sites, but they are just based on vBulletin and the forum right now, but I want to create a homepage and diversify from the forum for content.

What would you like to see on a homepage for a travel site?

As in travel, I mean for people travelling and talking about traveling and getting help about locations, activities etc.

Thanks for any help!

I would think I would like a nice colourful page with some random snippets of text from articals to get me to view the whole artical.

Also with some images that link to articals; probably changing everytime I visited the site or refreshed the page as that can be more interesting than wading through a load of links.

A good search box.

There are many elements that go into creating a travel site. Off the top of my head here are a few of them:

  1. And # one in importance, what can your site offer that you can do better than competitors or that competitors don’t offer?
  2. Will your visitors’ focus be on:
  • location
  • method of travel
  • accommodations
  • price
  1. Is your demographic
  • Local commuter travel
  • Regional travel
  • National travel
  • International travel

4.Will the majority of your visitors be traveling for business or pleasure? This involves time of year for pleasure travelers, but not so much for those who travel for business.

If you already have a travel forum, the most popular topics entered by your visitors is a great place to start your research.

Finally, check the competition and see what their focus is on and what they do best. Here’s a link to popular travel sites: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/travel-websites

Here are some hints on the basic functions for one tourism website:

  • Provide information about your company.

  • Provides information on services that your company (Tours, Visa, Hotel, Transport, etc.).

  • Information on the famous tourist sites, introducing the country, people, climate, natural …

  • Information on tours, hotel …

  • Tools that allow customers to order online (Booking tours, hotel booking, ticket booking, etc.).

  • Basic Utilities: exchange rates, weather, price tickets, train …

  • Contact page and online support.

  • If possible, you should put Testimonials (Feedback / Testimonial). This is a point to make customers more interested and confident in your services.

maybe provide a index of all the featured topics and discussion ~

I love to travel! In fact, I’ve already started to arrange our itinerary for the tour. We have our tickets already. wohooo! Anyway, I was in charge with our ticket booking. What I frequently want to see at a homepage are the promos! Not just me, I think most people do. So, you might want to consider putting a section of that in your homepage. Why not help direct people on sites which they can get such travel promos. That should be nice.

in addition to what has been added above, I want to see the A section for latest Travel tips with redirection to the whole article and snippet of travel review

Oh, and don’t forget to put in some really nice pix of your travel destinations. We travel to see people and places, and there’s nice like a preview!

Just recently, we have set up a travel website, the homepage consists of random photos, announcements of travel deals and other promotions. The FB fanpage and Twitter account is also found in the homepage so that visitors can easily like the page and follow the site on Twitter.

A homepage with previews to reviews and photos of popular tourist attractions would be ideal. I see some sites also have some airline reviews too.