A good performing service apartment website in Bangalore can give you an average of 15-20 qualified leads in a single day and with a conversion of 25%. Does it not make a business to invest a onetime Rs 50,000 for a basic good website?

My Pain:

How to choose a good vendor for making website & doing ethical SEO?

What do I tell him on how the website should look like?

What technology inputs I need to tell him?

What all pages should the website have?

What would be the cost?

My experience:

Many just kick start the service apartment business based on the little connections they have. Randomly they would list in some directories and hoping queries will start coming.

Problems begins when they stop getting business consistently and then they are desperate for business.

My humble advice to all of them is start with these fundamentals.

1. Business name: Find a good name and register it.
2. Collaterals: Engage a agency and get your visiting cards, letter head and logo made. Ref blog on Marketing Ideas for business
3. Website: Invest in website now as a website could take minimum six months to start ranking in google search and get you leads.

Here I am going to talk about the process of getting your website Developed

Step 1: Identifying agencies

A website design company who claims that they have the competency to rank your new website on first page, should first prove that their own site is ranking on page one. Hope you all will agree with me on this logic. If yes then read on

1. Do a google search using these 3 keywords (enter your city name)
   1. web design companies in (city)
   2. web design companies in (city)
   3. website development company in (city).
2. First put keyword a) and make a list of all companies in page 1.
3. Repeat with keyword b)
4. Repeat with keyword c)
5. Find the common companies appearing for keyword a), b) & c). You will find those 3 to 4 companies appearing in all keyword search. Those are your priced catch
6. PS: Ignore the following
   • Ad which are top 3 lines
   • Top 10 list websites
   • List of best websites

Step 2: A typical service apartment website structure

Please ensure a responsive website design to ensure website can fit within different screen sizes like Mobile or desktop. All you need is a static website, typically, 8-10 pages as under.

Home Page: About us: Facilities: Rooms: Offers & Packages: Gallery: Location: Contact us.

Step 3: Check portfolio of their work & get a quote

Find out the agency’s portfolios from the websites and evaluate their portfolio work on following parameters

Evaluate their Web Design Work: Go through the agencies portfolio work and see how they have done it. Get a touch and feel of the websites they have created and see if you like them. Understand how easy to navigate the websites are and see if they are user friendly.

Evaluate their SEO work: Understand what business the portfolio sites are into. Go to google and search for keywords that are relevant to their business. See how the companies are performing in the search results. This process is similar to that of the one you did to evaluate the agency.

Talk to them & Get Quotes: Once you are satisfied that the agency is competent enough, talk to them about your requirements and tell them what you are looking for. Based on that get a quotation on prices form all the short-listed agencies. Compare the prices from the quotes you have obtained and choose the one that fit your budget.

Do some Homework:

This is the info that you have to provide to the agency and rest of the content, Keyword research & design sitemap would be developed by them

• Explore: some Service apartment website that you like, so that you can share your liking to the agency.
• About us: do some write up about yourself, your dream, passion etc
• Home page: Think about your USP. How is your service apartment different than your competitor?
• Facilities: Amenities offered in your serviced apartments
• Pictures: Please get professional room pictures & videos please do not compromise on this. Photography & Videography will cost you 20K. Get good quality pictures of bedroom, Bathroom, living area, Dinning area and building exterior.
• Prices: Please share your pricing structure for various categories of Room like Executive, Deluxe, Studio or BHK Apartment and special price offer for short stay < 7days, weekly stay, Fortnightly, Triweekly & Monthly for single & Double occupancy.
• Location: Your proper postal address and google co-ordinates
• Contact us: Make a query response form and your address, Email, Contact number, GST details and Bank details
• Header Information: Your contact no that you want it to be displayed on the header
• Footer Information: Your social media Links

Visit & Close the deal: Plan a visit. Talk to their team. Negotiate the prices, fix the targets and target dates and close the deal. The typical price should be around Rs 20,000 and they should be able to complete in 2 weeks’ time.

My Conclusion:

I repeat, spending a little extra on website design, quality images are worth the investment. Though the website will start generating leads only after 6 months but will be worth the investment. Do write your comment in case you find it useful.

Also checkout: Effectiveness of Print Media advertisements