Website desgin & Hosting

FranksTours

Hi all
Can anyone please help me?
Ive tried researching online and theres so much information!
I want to start up my own tour operator firm.
To get my business started its vital i setup website.

The IT side i require website with ecommerce etc
Or how choose Hosting? Advertising and logo?
Would really appreciate all replies and Happy Christmas!

spheric

I think the first thing to do here is for you to have a long think about what kind of website you want to make. Depending on what you want visitors to be able to do on the website, it could be a few hours work for someone or it could keep a team of skilled professionals busy for months, with obvious cost implications.

At the simplest end of the scale, there's the static "this is who we are, and what we do, here's how to contact us" type webpage. This is the sort that you'd likely be able to do yourself, and would also be the cheapest to get done by others.

A little more complex would be a site that lists the holidays and deals available. You'd need some mechanism to update the available holidays as a bare minimum, as well as sensible way to let customers look at what's available.

More complex still you could look into an online booking system. For this you'd need someone who knew their way around online payment systems, as well as a means of integrating with the booking systems of your suppliers. This is the sort of work that expedia etc. have a team of full-time programmers to keep up and running.

If you're looking at the simpler end of the scale, it might be that its feasible to learn enough to make it yourself, or you might be able to find a technically minded student who needs some work whilst they study to do the work for you at a reasonable price. For the more complex stuff you'll likely need to hire in expertise.