The whole site builder concept is very popular now days. I know of several designers offering this service to clients. It's a value added selling point for them. I get the impression they charge quite a bit per month for the service as well.

The site has to be super easy to use. If you think it's easy it's probably not easy enough! I thought my site was pretty easy to use but I've had a few people sign up and run into difficulties when adding their B&B.

Site builders are a bit more involved and therefore should be that much easier to use with clear help and an easy to use interface.

You have an interesting idea, I toyed with doing something similar myself but changed my mind. because I cut out the feature in the interest of time.

I look forward to following your progress. _________________ Shawn The Bed and Breakfast Connector

Thank you for your feedback and advice Shawn. You make some good points.

bbconnector wrote: I know of several designers offering this service to clients. It's a value added selling point for them. I get the impression they charge quite a bit per month for the service as well.

My idea is to offer this service at no more than the average cost of hosting. They could think of it as getting the design and ability to update their own site for free.

bbconnector wrote: The site has to be super easy to use. If you think it's easy it's probably not easy enough! I thought my site was pretty easy to use but I've had a few people sign up and run into difficulties when adding their B&B.

Site builders are a bit more involved and therefore should be that much easier to use with clear help and an easy to use interface.

That's a really good point. I will make note to "hold their hand" with help icons and walkthroughs sprinkled throughout. Thank you for the tip.

Hi Gliebster and welcome to The B&B Lady's blog,

Your idea sounds like a good one. There are certainly lots of B&B's starting up in need of an inexpensive website. Your feature list is large and your concern for Search engine optimization is noteworthy. You are right when you say many of the sitebuilder type sites are horrendous on this aspect.

As bbconnector points out, it would have to be VERY easy to use AND reliable or you will spend more time on the phone / email offering help than anything else. I know it sounds like something you could automate, but if the idea takes off, you will get burried in trouble calls. You have a scalability issue you will have to plan for (and judging by your guess at a price I am thinking you haven't considered it yet) You are offering hosting, domain registration, email accounts, design, programming, maintanance and tech support. Because of trying to do it all, you will likely blow your budget on the tech/customer support aspect.

From a design/ marketing / optimization point of view, the idea is difficult because the more levels of depth you offer for people to be able to control, the more they will either get in over their head or they will not know what to do and the site will limp along. Every feature you offer becomes a double edged sword for innkeepers. You offer the ability to upload pictures. Some will use that wisely but most will upload photos that are fuzzy, cluttered, badly lit, too big, too small... The potential to have a great site also becomes the potential to slit their busines's throat.

Another concern I have from an innkeeper's point of view is that you are essentially renting out websites. People will pay your yearly fee to rent their site instead of own it. Renting anything long term is always a financial mistake. If something bad happened to your business and it folded, they would have nothing to show for it. If they sell their B&B, they can't sell the website with it. If your design tool is great but your server is down all the time and they want to hire a new host, they lose the site they built with you. If they hire a designer, as you suggest, to make changes to the site on your system, they are paying someone to do work but its trapped within your conent management system and they can't take it with them if they leave. Its like paying an interior designer to come paint an apartment you are renting, when you move from the appartment you have nothing to show for your investment, so it wasn't an investment.

Other concepts you would need to consider: Who would own the domain name? Who would own the content? What would the minimum commitment be? What level of customer service / support help would you offer? What's your up-time guarantee? When an innkeeper completely makes a mess of their site, how much will it cost them to have you fix it or hold their hand while they fix it?

Sorry, I don't mean to sound negative, it just seems that your suggested cost is way too low for the services you will need to provide. As a result, rates will rise or service will suffer. I have seen other groups start offering these content management based systems in the $350 ballpark and they very rapidly grow to charging $600. I don't believe they intentionally set out to raise their prices, I think most wanted to do good but just couldn't maintain the service they needed to at the low price. At $200 its not a bad deal because as you say, it is close to what they would pay for hosting, but at $350 a year ($1,050 over 3 years) its a questionable deal, and at $600 a year ($1,800 over 3 years) its no deal at all. And most B&B's want to picture themselves being around for longer than 3 years so the cost far outweighs the more traditional methods web design. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

Thanks Steve. I really appreciate everything you've brought up.

swirt wrote: As bbconnector points out, it would have to be VERY easy to use AND reliable or you will spend more time on the phone / email offering help than anything else. I know it sounds like something you could automate, but if the idea takes off, you will get burried in trouble calls. You have a scalability issue you will have to plan for (and judging by your guess at a price I am thinking you haven't considered it yet) You are offering hosting, domain registration, email accounts, design, programming, maintanance and tech support. Because of trying to do it all, you will likely blow your budget on the tech/customer support aspect.

Domain registration would be automated on my end and the customer would then be able to manage their domain through the registrar and the registrar would provide support to them. The bulk of design and programming work will be done at launch. Hosting will be totally proprietary and they will not have access to FTP, etc. etc. so I will not need to go through the usual headaches of hosting support. That leaves support and maintenance (keeping the server(s) running) being the main considerations and I agree, they can become HUGE and I appreciate you suggesting I considering these things when pricing.

swirt wrote: From a design/ marketing / optimization point of view, the idea is difficult because the more levels of depth you offer for people to be able to control, the more they will either get in over their head or they will not know what to do and the site will limp along. Every feature you offer becomes a double edged sword for innkeepers. You offer the ability to upload pictures. Some will use that wisely but most will upload photos that are fuzzy, cluttered, badly lit, too big, too small... The potential to have a great site also becomes the potential to slit their busines's throat.

That's true. I think I may add an option to request a site review (possibly free for the first review) where a professional browses the site to make sure images are of respectable quality, content is neat, etc. then return to the customer with a report an suggestions. Problem of images being to large or small shouldn't be an issue since I will have the sitebuilder insert them into "slots" and resize and optimize accordingly.

swirt wrote: Another concern I have from an innkeeper's point of view is that you are essentially renting out websites. People will pay your yearly fee to rent their site instead of own it. Renting anything long term is always a financial mistake. If something bad happened to your business and it folded, they would have nothing to show for it. If they sell their B&B, they can't sell the website with it. If your design tool is great but your server is down all the time and they want to hire a new host, they lose the site they built with you. If they hire a designer, as you suggest, to make changes to the site on your system, they are paying someone to do work but its trapped within your conent management system and they can't take it with them if they leave. Its like paying an interior designer to come paint an apartment you are renting, when you move from the appartment you have nothing to show for your investment, so it wasn't an investment.

Good point. A solution may be to offer an automated "download your site" option where the site would be zipped up into pure static HTML format allowing the customer to host it elsewhere. I imagine it's best that this feature is included in the price so that nobody feels I am trapping them. Of course, if the service is as good as I plan, I won't need to worry about customers taking their sites and running.

swirt wrote: Other concepts you would need to consider: Who would own the domain name? Who would own the content? What would the minimum commitment be? What level of customer service / support help would you offer? What's your up-time guarantee? When an innkeeper completely makes a mess of their site, how much will it cost them to have you fix it or hold their hand while they fix it?

They would own the domain name and content. Considering the "download your site" option design would have to be theirs as well.

Support: My plan would be to offer e-mail support during business hours via a ticket system 7 days a week, without phone support. Do you think this would be sufficient or B&B type customers would demand phone support over e-mails support?

Uptime: I am thinking uptime guarantee would be 99.X%, meaning if their site goes down for more than a total of X minutes per month then they will be entitled to some sort of credit. Credit would most likely be in the form of a dollar value off their renewal. Do you think this would be respectable?

For minimum committment I am leaning toward one year (possibly 6 months at a less discounted rate). I lean toward one year for several reasons:

- The low cost of the service - Free trial period allows them to build and see their site before buying - Domain name would be included in price - They could "download your site" and run - Simplifies billing for everybody

The idea will be to make it nearly impossible for an innkeeper to make a mess of their site and as a result make it possible for anybody to make a professional looking site. It will basically be a game of "fill in the blanks" for them. WYSIWYG editor will be used only in content areas, not allowing them to mess with the design. I will let them edit HTML of content area so that is a consideration. Worst case scenario: reset the page content and start over. Help with this type of thing will be part of the support provided.

swirt wrote: Sorry, I don't mean to sound negative, it just seems that your suggested cost is way too low for the services you will need to provide. As a result, rates will rise or service will suffer. I have seen other groups start offering these content management based systems in the $350 ballpark and they very rapidly grow to charging $600. I don't believe they intentionally set out to raise their prices, I think most wanted to do good but just couldn't maintain the service they needed to at the low price.

Good point also. It's much better to nail the correct price right off the bat then it is to be too idealistic and eventually raise prices (or go out of business). I will consider all of this. Thank you.

swirt wrote: At $200 its not a bad deal because as you say, it is close to what they would pay for hosting, but at $350 a year ($1,050 over 3 years) its a questionable deal, and at $600 a year ($1,800 over 3 years) its no deal at all. And most B&B's want to picture themselves being around for longer than 3 years so the cost far outweighs the more traditional methods web design.

Very true. This is why my aim will be to keep the costs very close to what you'd expect to pay for hosting/domain alone. I appreciate your perspective on pricing.

It sounds like you have very good intentions and I hope you can pull it off.

The review site option is a good one, but again this could easily dominate your time or the time of your hired help, so be careful with this. Be clear about what you are offering and what you aren't.

Quote: A solution may be to offer an automated "download your site" option where the site would be zipped up into pure static HTML format allowing the customer to host it elsewhere.

From an innkeepers point of view, thats a great idea. Its a good way to build trust. It may also lead you to ruin ... For $200 I can have you build me a site and then I can run away with it and go from a $200 a year host (you) to a $100 a year cheapy host. Maybe shoot for somewhere inbetween.

Quote: Support: My plan would be to offer e-mail support during business hours via a ticket system 7 days a week, without phone support. Do you think this would be sufficient or B&B type customers would demand phone support over e-mails support?

swirt wrote: From an innkeepers point of view, thats a great idea. Its a good way to build trust. It may also lead you to ruin ... For $200 I can have you build me a site and then I can run away with it and go from a $200 a year host (you) to a $100 a year cheapy host. Maybe shoot for somewhere inbetween.

That is true. Though, they will end up losing the easy way of updating their site and may end up having to pay somebody to do it for them... or worse, end up butchering it themselves. It wouldn't be worth it if they are only saving a couple bucks a month on hosting. They may not realize this though so I will have to make it a point to remind them of what they will lose by leaving.

Or, I could charge a reasonable fee for this feature. I'd rather not though, which is why I think if I can keep costs close to hosting alone and charge on an annual basis, then it'd be worth it even if they do this. Another way to look at is that they paid $200 to generate a site and there was little effort on my part. The idea of course though is to get renewals though. I will have to think about this.

swirt wrote: I think this is the part you are seriously overestimating. The inline javascript WYSIWIGs typically make a mess of code. And since you are giving them the ability to enter html it is inevitable they will mis-nest a tag or two and they will end up with a mess.

The margin between what's a good price for them and what you can afford to sell it for is very narrow. You'll have to be real careful.

True. Since this will be geared toward people who know nothing about web design, maybe I'll scratch the idea of allowing them to edit HTML. Either that or put a big fat warning saying, "you'd better know what you're doing by editing the HTML." As for the WYSIWYG editor I can strip it down to do only the most basic things (bold, italic, links, etc.). The editor will be used only in certain spots. I will provide another method of inserting images.

swirt wrote: The other thing to consider is your potential competition. Sites like bbonline where you can essentially build a couple of pages and point a domain name at it. They are typically ugly sites, but they do have the benefit of funneling considerable traffic through the main bbonline site.

Thanks. I was having trouble finding competition, which is why I am considering undertaking this project. Their sites are not so pretty, but the traffic funneling is a big plus.

I was thinking of partnering with some B&B directory sites and seeking discounted listings for my customers. Another idea I have for the future is to start a B&B directory. I realize there are many, the biggest charging huge amounts for listings. I was thinking of starting a free directory and populating it with every B&B I can find. If I can get traffic to pickup I'd sell upgraded listings that standout and are listed at the top of their regions. I would love to give free upgraded listings to my site builder customers. Then this service and the site builder service would feed each other.

I am getting ahead of myself at his point.

swirt wrote: But back to your original question. Yes I think there is a market and an interest in it among innkeepers. People are eager to save money so they will likely see what you are offering as a good deal. If you can do all the things you are saying, it might be a good deal.

Thanks again for all the feedback. There is a lot to work out, but I see there is a path. I have a couple questions if you have the time.

- Any idea how many B&B's / Inns / Lodges / etc. there are in North American. Any idea how many new start per year? I'm having trouble finding numbers on this.

- I would be targeting B&B's mainly. However coming up with a short B&B domain name is not very easy, so I am considerng using "Inn" in the name instead. I know technically an inn is different from a B&B. However, I see B&B owners refer to their places as Inns. Would you feel a service with "Inn" in the name would appeal to B&B's?

Quote: - Any idea how many B&B's / Inns / Lodges / etc. there are in North American. Any idea how many new start per year? I'm having trouble finding numbers on this.

Good question. I have no idea. Kit may be able to shed some light on this.

Quote: - I would be targeting B&B's mainly. However coming up with a short B&B domain name is not very easy, so I am considerng using "Inn" in the name instead. I know technically an inn is different from a B&B. However, I see B&B owners refer to their places as Inns. Would you feel a service with "Inn" in the name would appeal to B&B's?

The difference between Inn and B&B is mainly a firecode / healthcode / zoning difference. In general most innkeepers use the term interchangeably in the States so there shouldn't be a problem with this.

Quote: I was thinking of partnering with some B&B directory sites and seeking discounted listings for my customers. Another idea I have for the future is to start a B&B directory.

Another B&B directory??? Seriously, every web database programmer and their brother is trying to cash in on this. I get a couple of calls a month from people trying to convince me to list my B&B with their brand new practically invisible directory. One out of 100 have an approach that sets them apart that might make it worth listing with them. The rest are just poorly thought out concepts that somebody wants to make a fast buck with. I would like to think most innkeepers are wise enough to separate the valuable from the worthless, but sadly many are not. (hhhmmm...mental note, create a post on that) The worst part is the "keeping up with the Joneses mentality" will probably continue until innkeepers realize they are paying a fortune to list in 30 different directories and all they are doing is encouraging more to pop up with their hands out.

bbconnector may have some thoughts to share on the notion of creating a directory. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

So far I've only seen big directories that seem to charge an arm and a leg for listings. They must get a load of traffic. I'm wondering though if there are any large, high traffic (the hard part) directories that are FREE (ad-supported). If not, I figure it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.

I certainly don't want to want to add to the junk-pile.

Quote: I'm wondering though if there are any large, high traffic (the hard part) directories that are FREE (ad-supported).

There are none that I know of. Even the major pay sites are also supported by adds. Do a few quick searches, all you find are the big players. If a free site did start performing well it would be bought up and converted to a pay site. The major sites have full time staff dedicated to promotion, new features, marketing, customer service and tech support. With their history, reputation, search engine position and overal traffic, it makes it hard for any startups to really catch up. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

My experiance has been that starting a B&B directory is hard work. There are enough of them out there that starting another isn't exactly easy.

Steve is right, B&B owners get bombarded with requests to join directories every day/week. I'm lucky enough to know a few local B&B owners who pass some of these requests on to me. Check out InnStar that guy has taken some time to rank/rate most of the B&B directories out there.

From what I've seen most B&B owners are unwilling to sign up to directories either free or pay unless you can proove that you can bring in the traffic. You can't bring in the traffic until you get listings. It's something of a catch-22. I've found that the bulk of my listings come from referals. B&B owners hear about me, sign up, like the service and tell another owner or post on a message board someplace.

As a point of interest I do have a partner program that lets people resell my paid accounts cheap. Contact my via the BBConnector site if your interested.

Now to switch gears... to get around the problem of people signing up and using a free account to creat their site and then taking off. You could always limit the zip feature to the pay accounts.

There is no perfect solution, people can always download the page via wget or some other such utility and end up with the source and images in a nice package.

Another good idea would be an "undo" feature that reverts the whole site back to a previous version. If you're using a database as the backend this would be doable. If you're using flat files, somethng like rcs or cvs would work well.

Just a few thoughts _________________ Shawn The Bed and Breakfast Connector

That's a good idea. I may end up making a "Page History" feature. If they mess up, they can review the last X versions of the page and revert.

I chose InnSiteBuilder.com for the name of this service. Development will begin in January and continue for several months. Hopefully I can launch this by summer.

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Quote: - Any idea how many B&B's / Inns / Lodges / etc. there are in North American. Any idea how many new start per year? I'm having trouble finding numbers on this.

Good question. I have no idea. Kit may be able to shed some light on this.

Sorry for not being too visible this week. I spent hours yesterday ripping up soaking carpet and padding after my office toilet overflowed for 48 hours. Ugh!

Now, to your question. I think there may be close to 50,000 B&Bs of all sizes and styles across North America. I think I got that number from PAII a year or so ago. But that could "just" be the number of hotels in the U.S. Anyone else ready to chime in on this?

I think your tool sounds interesting, but agree with Steve that it could be too difficult to help innkeepers master all the nuances they need to create a truly great website. But hey, maybe it could be a start for a web professional to use as a springboard.

A bit of searching turned up a statistic from PAII that in 1980 there were 1000 B&B's and in 2001 there were 19,000. Thats quite a "Newhart effect". Maybe the growth was that much but it does make me wonder if there was some shift in recording methods. 1000 in 1980 seems low. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

I think you may be onto something Steve. I do know that the trend has boomed, but it's hard to believe there were only 1000 B&Bs in the US 25 years ago. Perhaps it's partially a matter of having national/international organizations promoting B&Bs so they are coming out of the woodwork. Add that to a growing trend, and you have a seemingly huge jump in the count.

And you can be sure there are more than 20,000 now! Thanks for the research, Steve.

1980 was pre-internet so probably the only ones counted were the ones listed with state associations. _________________ Steve Wirt Wine Country Cabins Bed and Breakfast in the Finger Lakes and Inngenious Bed and Breakfast Website Promotion

There weren't state associations either . There were RSOs (Reservation Service Organizations) somewhere along the line, but I don't know if they existed in 1980 either. Census records?