I don’t know about anyone else but Alaska Airlines is going to have to give me a little more than 10% off to fly to Mexico  right now.  There’s a lesson here for email marketing though which is the real point and it’s pretty simple.  If there’s a timely story like a world wide health epedimic and your email marketing message might have something in it that is related, it would probably be a good time to review the message and maybe even rethink your effort.

During day dreaming you want to present them with a lot of eye candy in the form of exotic and interesting pictures.  During the planning phase a Website should provide the person with enough information to help them make informed decisions about where they are going and what they might do once they’re there.  In the final phase a Website should make it easy for them to book their trip.

Ultimately you want to have something for people at each phase.  The stage one folks, the day dreamers, need lots of eye candy.  A picture gallery with just a some but not too much information is most appropriate for people in the day dreaming phase.   The photo gallery page at http://www.asian-oasis.com/gallery.html is a fine example though you might want to make yours more extensive.  Be sure to take the steps necessary to get Google to include it in their image searches.

The country page as it is laid out right now addresses people in the planning stage.   This is a really important phase.  The day dreamers are the furthest away from actually booking a trip with you.  The planners have gone beyond wishing they were no longer behind their work desk on a dreary gray day.  They’ve looked at the pictures and decided to think about what they would like to do if they went. Providing these folks with relevant, user friendly information is crucial to convincing them to use your service when they get to the action phase. This is also where allowing them to build and save an itinerary comes in. That said, you still need some eye candy to help them keep focused on why they wanted to go in the first place.

The action phase on your site is primarily about making a booking or preliminary booking.  Here what is important is that booking is easy and builds confidence that they are doing the right thing by booking with you.