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Have you any plans for allowing frequent updates or for showing availability on your website?Funny you should ask - that's exactly what I plan to do next.AvailabilityI have considered a diary system to be added later this year where potential customers could see the availability of pitches.There are two options here, depending on where the 'master' copy of your bookings is held. If the master copy is in the diary beside the telephone, then you would have to update the availability whenever you take or cancel a booking. The website should then point out that the availability shown is only an estimate and does not cover bookings or cancellations in the past 1 or 2 or 3 days, depending on how often you think you are likely to update it. Alternatively, the website could hold the master copy. It would show the 'up to date' availability and change that automatically as it takes bookings. With this system, you would have to check on the internet before taking bookings over the phone. I will probably offer both systems and CL owners can choose which one, if either, to use. Following my philosophy that caravaners will do their searches on the Caravan Club website, I would not expect to offer a search for a CL with availability on certain dates. I think this could only work if every CL owner used my service - and that seems unlikely. A search over a restricted number of CLs is probably not very useful - in my opinion. What about CL owners making their own frequent updatesI had not considered the idea of CL owners updating their own sites - but I think it is a very good idea, thank you to Mandy Pollard.I imagine there will be CL owners with a variety of computer skills. I anticipate :- People who do not even have internet access. They can still have a website (but no e-mail) and the updating and reviewing of their sites will be done by post on paper. There will be people with very little understanding of computers for whom it would be best to have their websites fully maintained for them. I would expect to update their sites a very few times each year for price changes etc. I could not handle everyone wanting to change things each week. Then there will be those who are more confident computer users and are willing to do some of the work themselves in order to have more control over their websites. I will also make that facility available - while keeping it as simple as possible to use. Finally there will be those who can update their own websites directly. There's not really anything I can do for them as they can do it all themselves. Will all these bells and whistles cost me more?In general - no, but if people want some facility which is going to take me a long time to develop, then I may make an extra charge to those who want to use the facility.I expect that the 'update' and 'availability' facilities will be included at no extra cost - unless they turn out to be a lot more complicated than I think at present. Other ideasI don't have any others at present, but you may have some. If there is anything else you would like to see on this service, or if you would like things to be done differently, please contact me (Ken Odam ) and I may well add it to the list of future plans.If you have any thoughts on my current plans, whether you think they are good ideas or not, please let me know that as well. The more feedback I have from you, my customers, the better I will be able to serve you. |