Property number 100 was The Old Postmill, Thorndon, pictured on the left.I have to thank Penny Moon for the initial suggestion and encouragement that led to me build the JustSuffolk website. It was Penny who thought that I could do “something different than the big accommodation sites.” The strategy that came from that idea was the “single county, targetted, accommodation website.” The first website to follow that plan was JustSuffolk.com, which benefits greatly from the popularity of WoodbridgeSuffolk.info. Both sites do well in Google searches.
JustSuffolk.com has subsequently been joined by other Just… websites, including the recently launched but not quite fnished JustEnglishCottages.com. As the name suggests, this is not a single-county site. Because it is a national website (like “the enemy”) with a much wider spread, I devised a different USP; brevity - I exclude marketing waffle. I have pruned the verbiage down so that busy accommodation hunters can find a suitable property much more easily.
For example, instead of describing a cottage as “ideally situated in the heart of [village] among the beautiful rolling hills, dales, and rivers of the world-famous Yorkshire Dales, ” I have described it simply as “in [village]” - the rest of the words frequently found in accommodation websites (including my own) are over-blown marketing waffle - yes, it might make it sound more attractive but I believe it can detract from actually finding the facts about a cottage, campt site, hotel or B&B. All such flowery rhetoric is similarly pared down.More details...
During the research to add the ’seed’ properties, I was struck how often the terms “ideally situated” and “in the heart of” appeared in so many websites. So many that it did not add to the website experience at all - it just became tedious. We’ll see how well that goes down with the property-seeking audience.
Posts
