Creating An Interesting Fresh Travel Website Easily
Creating a travel website can be a great way to share your journeys, experiences, and passions with an audience that can include friends and family, but also a variety of travel enthusiasts from around the world! Whether you mean to simply share your experiences or turn a profit from your website, there are many easy avenues that anyone can pursue to make an engaging, compelling, and well-designed site.
Selecting a Platform
There are many platform options available for creating a website. Different platforms work for different people; many free website and blogging platforms offer a host of themes and templates that you can customize on your own, with additional benefits if you agree to pay for upgrades and premium content options. Some websites are already devoted to helping people curate their own travel pages: they usually offer free membership, with upgrades and premium options available for those who want extra customization or promotional punch. Microblogging platforms like Tumblr offer a more linear perspective on your content, but they’re very user-friendly. Moreover, there are thousands of free layouts (“themes”) to pick from, and setup is blissfully easy.
Generating Appeal
The design of your website will be what “hooks” visitors. Take inspiration from some of your own favorite travel blogs, and then take some time to sketch out your own ideal layout.
Readability
Make sure that when creating a website, you select a font that’s easy to read, such as Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts are usually easier to read than serifs). Pick a background that doesn’t make your text difficult to see, and make sure that you have plenty of room for pictures!
Formatting is important!
If your website will be largely text-based, make sure that you have a clear structure to your narrative, and try to break your content into digestible sections, with headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings should have titles and subtitles. Breaking text into smaller chunks is less intimidating to the average reader, so using this trick will help you maintain reader engagement. Interspersing photos evenly between chunks of text is a good way of adding structure as well.
Photos
Creating a website that will keep readers interested will require that you collect some high-quality, interesting media during your trip. Don’t just take group pictures– try to take some striking photographs that really capture the feel of your travel destinations. Most cameras have a panorama option for generating 180-degree views, and certain times of day provide excellent natural lighting opportunities. Take advantage of dawn, dusk, and semi-shaded areas to give your photos an artistic flair. Don’t be afraid of sprucing up your photos in Photoshop when you get back!
Videos
Most cameras can also take video, and it can’t hurt to include short videos on your web page. Generally speaking, try not to narrate during your videos; you can provide captions on your web page or insert narration if you do any editing or post-production when you return home. Some people take lots of video, and then edit down their content to represent only the most exciting and interesting moments. This is a good approach, and it’s even better if each exciting moment gets its own video. The point is to keep people clicking and searching for more.
Interesting tidbits
If you want to lure new readers to your website, make some posts where you write short, snappy pieces about what you’ve learned from your travels. Many new travelers are on the lookout for information and advice, so if you have useful know-how, it can’t hurt to share it.
Stories
Make sure to include some human interest in your posts. If you meet interesting characters, write about them! Even if your adventures are not all that dramatic, part of the appeal of travel websites is that they transport the reader to a different place with different customs. Writing about people you meet during your travels will give your readers a better idea of the atmospheres of your trips, and potentially of the culture of places you go.
When and How to Update
Depending on the type of travel website you want to maintain, you’ll have to decide whether you need regularly updated content during your travels, or whether you want to upload content upon your return home. Regardless, most people maintain interest in regularly-updated web pages, so consider finding an internet café wherever you are abroad, using it to make small updates during your trip. These updates can be teasers of exciting stories to come. Once your return home, really polish up your story, pictures, and videos, and break your trip down into episodes. Instead of posting the entirety of your trip all at once, break it into several updates that will appear on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. If you travel only sporadically, this can be a good way of filling up your website between trips.
Another way of providing content when you’re between travels is to write about where you’d like to go. Consider opening a comments section for readers to give input. There are also many ways of incorporating polls into your website. This is a fun audience-participation tool that can spruce up your page and give your readers a sense of personal involvement.
Whether you’re creating a travel website for fun or for profit, remember that the same things that draw you to a website will draw in many of your readers! Maintain a variety of media, keep up with regular updates, pay attention to detail, and most of all have fun!