Reviews
Review: bbonline.com
Again, the basic level here seems to be the best for most advertisers. Definitely worth the $149 per year; I don’t know who would really benefit from the $500 package. I couldn’t find a region where that level of service would make sense in my search, other than for those that perhaps still don’t have their own website.
The Good: Webervations integration gives availability information. Nearby Inns are given decent presentation, exposing you to more searchers. This site has the largest internet reach of all, with more inbound links and indexed pages than any other directory to date. The directory is PageRank generous, indexing the internal pages within 3 links of the main page - giving many inn pages a PR of 3 themselves.
The Bad: The internal pages for inns seem almost like a website of themselves. It would be easy for a novice internet user to mistake the internal inn page as your inns website. To make that worse, the pages are clunky and old school (counter and all!) which doesn’t present well to a web savvy audience.
Our Inn Results: We advertise on bbonline.com. We are in a moderately competitive area on their site, there are about a dozen inns listed in our region. In the last 6 months we received 780 click throughs to our website from this one. The visitors viewed an average of 4 pages and spent an average of 6 minutes on our site. Of those there were 19 who followed our preset conversion path and became a reservation. (This does not account for others that may have become a reservation through alternate paths i.e. phone sale, return visit to our site or booking directly via an alternate channel). Overall, bbonline.com ranked 2nd in our paid directory click through and conversions in the last 6 months.
My Ratings:
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The Stats:
Age of Domain: 13 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 105,866
AlexaRank: 64,276
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - starting at the basic $149 per year package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $149
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $495
Notes about Packages and Membership: 4 levels - featured and state page listings are at highest level, extra photos etc. Basic gives link and 1 photo.
The Site: www.bbonline.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008
Discussion
3 comments for “Review: bbonline.com”
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BBONLINE has been our #1 referrer and comes up top in all google searched for our area.
The basic membership package (with link to our website which is a must have for any Inn) is the best bang for your buck in this industry.
Availability Search right on our listing is invaluable. Being able to see the room rate right there and book the room is also invaluable (on our listing it sends the user right into our webervations page on our website).
The other feature with is priceless for a guest is if you do a city search, it brings up “5 B&B’s located in that city” then below or beside it “10 B&B located NEAR that city” and tells you the OTHER city name right there without having to open anything up. This is what guests need!!! This is so helpful. People researching and planning travel arrangements for a trip NEED THIS.
They do not have to work so hard to find this information like you do on bedandbreakfast.com and other directories. Bedandbrekfast.com explained the “nearby cities” feature on their website ‘as the crow flies’ when I asked them. I asked because they have a couple cities listed as 28 miles that take over an hour to get to from here. We have this MOUNTAINS right here and we are not a crow. We have to navigate these winding roads.
Lastly the INNS FOR SALE being listed first as “Inns for sale in the last 30 days” this is very helpful.
http://www.ClaiborneHouse.net THANKS FOR THE REVIEWS!
The bottom line on Bbonline is that it shows up well in organic searches and people use it. Even before its modest makeover last year, people used it. For the majority of my clients it outdelivers bedandbreakfast.com in terms of clickthroughs (varies by location).
I agree that it can be confusing as to whether you are on their site or the inn’s site. The varried themes as you go from page to page are the main cause.
From a technical point of view it is annoying that there are only limited things you can alter by yourself when editing your property listing. Something as simple as editing your description can’t be done without emailing them the description. Their availability request form for sending the innkeeper an email request is annoying as well. Fortunately not that many potential guests seem to use that feature.
On the plus side though, their rates are reasonable for the power they offer. Having true direct links (as opposed to redirects) is good for the innkeeper’s website and the fact that they do let you link directly to your availability calendar is a big plus. Despite the downsides, it is still the best value in terms of cost for the number of visitors they bring (cost per click).
Every innkeeper in my town advertises on bbonline. One of them actually uses bbonline as their website, and their listing on bedandbreakfast.com links to their page on bbonline. So “pages that can be confused as a website” is a great thing for little dinky bed and breakfasts with no website at all.
It’s the best $149 you can spend on marketing! It may not be as “professional” as bedandbreakfast.com, but it’s an affordable, usable, and practical way to go for low-tech inns.