Sending Picasa albums to potential punters.

How to communicate with your potential renters - how to turn site visitors into enquiries, and enquiries into bookings.
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Mountain Goat
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Sending Picasa albums to potential punters.

Post by Mountain Goat »

We've clinched a couple of bookings recently (one for a next-day last-minute arrival) by drenching the enquirer with Picasa albums of the property, local area etc. - and both bookers said it was the Picasa albums which made them impulse book.

While messing around with various ways of sending the Picasa link, I found this interesting:

If you select your Picasa album and, middle-left, copy the suggested e-mail link, you get (in my opinion) a rather baffling initial display:

Picasa Suggested Link

which is OK if the punter knows what to do with it, and who might discover the slide-show button, although there are plenty of alternatives.

But if you let the slide-show leap into action and immediately copy the resultant url (and I mean quick, to get the intro image) and copy/send that link instead:

1st Slide Show image

You get an immediate slide-show - a bit in your face, but it seems to be effective. Snapped mostly by a pro standing precariously on the roof of our neighbour's chalet, and I think it shows (that it was a pro, I mean, and makes our attempts a little sad). This week he's doing it with 20cms of snow on the roof...

Or do you all do that anyway with Picasa (or whatever you use)?

MG
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

Wow MG! That's awesome! What a sales clincher - the full screen image is so effective!
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Chianti
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Post by Chianti »

M G

What gave you the idea, it's most original and your photos are fantastic. I think I'll try it myself.

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Post by Hells Bells »

I already use the link to the slideshows on my website, but hadn't thought of using it in email enquiries, what a good idea. That remins me I have some new pictures to add.
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Post by Stu »

Brilliant MG! Your property looks stunning, and that slide show sells it extremely well!
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Mountain Goat
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Post by Mountain Goat »

Thanks for all your +ve comments.

What gave you the idea?

Chianti, I'd been struggling to find the best way to add our Picasa albums to our website (WordPress), and the alternatives (so far that I've found) are a simple clicked link to the album or having the index pic. show on the website, and then that clicks through to the album, or using Picasa's RSS feed to WordPress (which needs a special plugin).

These are all workarounds until I find out how to have a proper photo gallery which doesn't clash with our WP theme, which it appears to do (OK, Garri, I'll try with Flickr as well, promise). What we have at the moment is seriously naff.

Anyway, we'd already been sending email enquiries the relevant Picasa album but recently, just to double-check, I sent one to myself, and found that the links to Picasa were out-of-date.

I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but if anyone is trying for the first time:

1) It's easier with a Gmail account (and apply for it outside the UK if you want Gmail rather than Googlemail).

2) Download Picasa from Google - it then tears around your hard-drive sniffing out every image it can find, arranging them in chronological albums.

3) Pick out what you want to stick on the web, sorted by albums (interior shots of your property, exterior shots, local area?) and it will then upload them to your web album.

4) Be careful to choose which you want for public viewing and which are private. Play around with Settings online if you want RSS feeds etc (just learning).

5) Maybe use www.tinyurl.com to shorten the links?

Have fun, but I would like to hear how the experts would do it.

MG
Last edited by Mountain Goat on Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

Just had a look Helen - I'd seen the images before but not full screen as a slideshow - have you had this in place long as I'm wondering if it was simply that I missed spotting it before? So effective!
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Post by Jimbo »

Mountain Goat wrote:
Snapped mostly by a pro standing precariously on the roof of our neighbour's chalet, and I think it shows
I think it shows too. Sometimes only a pro will do. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, having a pro-snapper taking your publicity pix can be an excellent investment. Doesn't mean you can't art-direct the shoot yourself but does mean that you can leave all that tricky technical stuff to an expert.

Not only true of photographs. I used to work for a shortish and fattish guy who never looked either because he always wore the most beautifully cut and extremely expensive hand-made suits which made him look like a Hollywood star. Sometimes, only a pro will do.

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Post by Hells Bells »

GG, I've had them on for a while now. Since I put the photo galleries on there I think. The pics on the webpage are fairly new though, (the collages of the album).
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Post by KathyG »

Blimey MG, those apartments are all seriously stunning! The only fault with linking to a Picasa album is that it's a bit slow to load but that may just be my laptop. Otherwise it all just looks fantastic :D
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Post by Hells Bells »

You can adjust the time between one picture and the next though.
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Post by Chianti »

Jim

I totally agree about the use of a professional photographer, however it's not always an option for financial reasons, but then your point applies to everything. Go for: quality quality quality every time.

Chianti

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Post by Mountain Goat »

Chianti, you have to think like a goat if there are financial restrictions.

How about tempting a local professional with doing a website in exchange for his/her work? This one is a bit of a cheat, for our guy:

http://www.josecrespo.info/

but at around £50/year it's unbeatable value. It's still under construction, and I'm trying to extract what he wants on the site, but it's a start. He gets requests to do weddings in England.....LOL

See Clikpic. Excellent support, nice outfit, choice of 20 or so templates and I've no connection. I've 'done' 4 with them, including a property site.....and you can play around for 7 days before finding your credit card.

MG
Last edited by Mountain Goat on Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Giddy Goat »

Jimbo wrote:who never looked either because he always wore the most beautifully cut and extremely expensive hand-made suits which made him look like a Hollywood star. Sometimes, only a pro will do.
Hmm - ladies, did you hear that?? License to spend!!! Can we quote you Jimbo? :D

Good website MG -or should I call you Subtense from now on?!
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Post by Mountain Goat »

Subtense?

Wozzat GG? One of my typos?

MG
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