Firstly, don’t panic. It doesn’t mean your traffic has actually dropped – it’s just that these different tools use different methods to measure your traffic. Logfile analyzers like AwStats look at the actual activity on your server and track the downloads of every single file – full pages, images, PDFs, scripts and so on. Google Analytics uses a tiny piece of Javascript on each page and tracks opens of full pages from visitors browsers.

Here are some factors that can make the results from these systems different:

• Robots (like Googlebot) don’t run Javascript so these visits won’t show up in Google Analytics
• Browsers cache website pages (i.e. keep a local copy on the computer) so they don’t always have to download pages that visitors read often. If this happens the web page view won’t show up at all on a log file (AwStats). Google Analytics can track the page view though because it runs on the browser
• Some browsers have Javascript disabled so Google won’t track any website visits
• Some visitors will have security software that stops Google working

There are pros and cons to each approach and I won’t confuse you with the detail (leave a comment or ask me if you’d like an explanation though!)

The basic message is that Google Analytics probably will show you a smaller number of visitors (maybe even a lot smaller). Many of these missed visits will be from automatic bots that are out there on the net crawling and indexing your site. You probably shouldn’t really care about them anyway, unless you’re worried about your site being indexed.

If you want some proof of this, take a look at a log file from a typical day of activity. Your internet host should provide these for you. Take a look through for robots (try a search for ‘bot’) – you may be surprised how often these visits happen.

Surely it’s easier and quicker to advertise on one of the vacation rental sites, or even to use one of the free listing services such as Google Base or Craig’s list? This is probably true, but what you want is results, and in this business that means visitors and bookings.

Here are nine reasons why your own site design will get you something a little better…

1. There’s too much competition so you need to do everything you can to improve your visibility on the internet. You simply can’t afford to miss out on your own site.

2. You can show your unique difference. Your property is uniquely different, right? You can use your site to highlight this, rather than fitting in with a bunch of other listings.

3. You’ll be more credible as a true online business with a brand, since you can choose your own logo, style and tagline.

4. Site tracking and analytics are way better. Actually they are probably non-existent on the free sites. Analytics allows you to make wise choices based on where your visitors come from, what they are looking for, and what leads them to a conversion.

5. Build as many pages as you want. Content is free (kind of) and there’s no restriction to a single page advert.

6. You get your own domain name. Good for branding (see above) plus you get to build your own Page Rank rather than contributing to someone else’s.

7. Choose your own conversion – whether it’s a contact form, advertising, newsletters, or a free brochure. You’re not restricted to a single form, and you’re free to build any combination of these to suit your website goals.

8. It’s stickier (I borrowed that term). In other words, you can layer more pages of useful information on your readers and take longer to convince them that you have a great place and offer unparalleled customer service. Compare this to a single page listing on a shared site where your competitors are just one click away…

9. Change your mind any time. Some listings sites only allow infrequent updates or may charge when you want to make a change. With your own site you can make adjustments and improvements any time.

One final thing. If you do decide to design your own vacation rental website, please don’t just buy a clone (unless you want to look like everyone else of course!)

That’s a good thing, right?

The problem is that people tend to only research their vacations a few times a year. They may only be interested in our site in January when preparing for a summer trip. This is bad news for return visitors through the year.

So what should I do about this? More importantly, what can you do?

I could remind customers about our place at the same time of year as our last contact – maybe with a message from our autoresponder. If they contacted us last February and stayed at our place in the summer, we might want to remind them about it again this February.

Can we afford to leave it for a whole year though? What if they did their research already in January? If we miss them by a week, we’ve lost a potential booking.

What we really want is to keep customers coming back to our site throughout the year. This will keep us and our place in their minds and maximize the chance that they will think of us again when they are planning their next vacation stay.

So over to you. What can you offer your visitors to keep them coming back through the year? If your site is just a few photos of your property and some description, I’ll guarantee its not going to be too compelling for them to come back to!

OK – here are some things you can try:

1. Write a blog about the holiday location. Heather Bayer does this really well at the cottageblogger.com Write about events, new offers, places to visit or updates and improvements to your place. Keep it fresh, open it up for comments and get involved in some discussion!

2. Build a discussion forum around your place. Give customers the chance to talk about their experiences, share vacation tips and tell stories. This is a great way to build interest, and it also shows that it’s not just you who thinks your place is great.

3. Use an autoresponder to send out regular messages to existing customers. Keep customers updated with availability offers and new information about your property

4. Try and catch them on Twitter or Facebook

5. If none of these work, use a calendar and pick up the phone!!

When you get customers back to your site, you can welcome them back with a personalized welcome message or some special info that only customers can see – maybe some special offers or some photos or a private discussion forum.

Of course all of this assumes you’re providing a great place to stay and that your customers want to book with you again…

I beg your pardon? That wasn’t very friendly was it?

This error message popped up from one of the online systems at work the other day. Actually I thought I’d been pretty busy for quite a while, so this was pretty disappointing to hear.

My point here is: pay attention to the error message that come from your website. And the welcome message. And the login message.

These messages are your chance to interact with your visitors. How often do you get the chance to do this? This is your opportunity to speak direct to your customers, so please say something nice.

Also, remember that the only reason you have the error message in the first place is because your code isn’t working. That’s slightly controversial I know, especially if you are a programmer (like me). Your code should be designed to deal with everything that your visitors throw at your site. In fact, it’s probably worth getting a non-programmer to write your messages.

What should an error message say?

The first thing you should do is apologize. Then explain what happened (from your visitors’ point of view). Tell them what they should do next and show them how to avoid the error in the future.

After all, no one wants to be told off twice.

Lots of web site owners have theories about their site:

• it gets lots of hits
• I get a lot of traffic from Squidoo
• I’m not selling very much

My message here is don’t rely on hunches. Make sure you measure your website. Use a good measurement tool like Google Analytics. Otherwise, how do you know if your site is successful? How do you know where your visitors come from? What do they do while they are on your site, and where do they leave?

Most importantly, do they take the actions that you want them to take (buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, click on an affiliate Ad, etc.)?

Once you what your visitors are up to, you can make some changes to make your site more useful.

Of course the saying really means that once you cut into your expensive piece of brazilian mahogany, its impossible to go back. No changes allowed. This is different to a website, where you can keep going back and changing it at any time (unless your designer charges by the hour)…