Gite rental web design.

[Jenny Rennes]

Hello Gites people,

I have the opportunity to buy a lovely old farmhouse that is currently divided into 3 gites.

If I buy the place I will want to recover some of the cost through renting the gites until I can return the house to it's former glory.

Are there any web design companies who specialise in gite rental sites ?

The reason I ask is that , having looked at a number of gite owner's sites, they are mostly cxxp and I want something a bit more than just a few photos and a list of prices (ie. interactive booking/payment on-site etc.)

Anyone know of anyone ?

Thanks.

Jenny. [:P]

 

[Eslier]

Jenny, I would advise you to be very careful. There are a number of "professional" web design companies around who will claim to offer you exactly what you are looking for. I have seen some sites which have been created by various companies which, to my mind, fail miserably to do the job. I think the main problem is that many of these people are IT specialists who don't really have much artistic or marketing ability. Consequently the end result will only be as good as the brief given to them.  There are, however, undoubtedly companies who do have the ability to give you what you want so shop around and look at some of their previous work. To get the best, you will probably need to enter into a contract which will provide ongoing development of your website over a period of time. It is rare to get everything exactly right first time and many things change so there will be a need for regular updating.

I'm not sure that I would agree with you about the need for on-line booking and payment facilities. In my experience, clients quite like to have some personal contact with the owner as it makes them feel happier about parting with their money. Having said that, I'm sure there are others who would disagree with me. If you do decide to look into this further then I would start by investigating the best method for accepting credit card payments. You are likely to find this is quite costly and there is also the risk of chargebacks.

Good luck.

[Owens88]

[quote user="Eslier"].......... To get the best, you will probably need to enter into a contract which will provide ongoing development of your website over a period of time. [/quote]

Hmm. Not sure that is sound because....

[quote user="Eslier"].......... It is rare to get everything exactly right first time and many things change so there will be a need for regular updating.
[/quote]

Agreed.

There will always be updating needs. Use the pro's for design (visual, technical and fit for purpose) but manage it yourself with refreshed content. Don't completely devolve control to a third party.

But good luck anyway.

[Albert the infopikey]

Owens88 wrote: <>

I'm currently an IT developer, but my background in visual communication runs back to art school, so I can see both sides of the Web site building process.

It is perfectly feasible nowadays to have a professionally built site that comes with a set of tools to allow the owner (you!) to update the content. The cheap & cheerful way just uses named files fitted into a grid structure -- upload new files with the same name and you've updated your site.

A middle path that doesn't have to use any proprietary software depends on the use of a database that you can update. That can also be used to interact with your site's visitors, for example to show all the vacancies in a given period.

Finally, there are add-on programs for the heavy-duty Web development tools that make updating sites easy for non-techies.

A good Web designer should be aware of all these options and be able to offer them to you.