Hi,
I run a group of travel websites with 4 million visitors a year. I also help travel companies with their web marketing.
The first thing I would say is: “Who are you?!”
If you are going to create an authoritative resource about the Yucatan (or anywhere), you either need to create the most comprehensive guide on the web (think Wikipedia size and scope) or you are going to promote your site based on who you are. Are you an expert? Do you live in the region?
Even if you don’t actually live in the Yucatan, your site will only come alive when you engage with your visitors on a personal level. You need to say: “This is who I am, this is my world view.” Then people can either buy into that or not. By staying anonymous (and not even having an “about” page is pushing it to the limits of anonymity), you will not achieve any level of engagement.
I would like to see something “about you” on the homepage, perhaps with your photo in the masthead. I want to know what you think about these places, and to hear your personal recommendations. Perhaps you can persuade your visitors to leave their own recommendations, but you’ll find that easier if you have a voice yourself on the site.
The success of my own sites has been built on promoting the editors and their personal expertise, emphasising the fact that theirs are individual recommendations. I think you can borrow that idea.
In terms of design, the site is too generic. It looks plain vanilla, clean and unthreatening but without character. Make it more cluttered, remove the background photo and get some pictures of people (Mexico is a populous country but anyone looking at your site would think it had been hit by a neutron bomb!)
Good luck
Mark Hodson,
[sig moderated as per the Forum Rules]
