Fishing Charter Website Design That Gets Bookings
With roots on the Outer Banks and over 25 years designing and managing fishing charter websites, we know what drives results. Trusted by charter captains from Hatteras Island,NC to Wanchese, NC and beyond. We work with charter captains all along the East Coast! In such a competitive industry with sometimes hundreds of fishing charters in one area you need every advantage you can get.
Sections
Design Your Website for Vacationers
What Images To Use On A Fishing Charter Website?
Google Maps and Reviews
Make Booking as Easy as Possible
SEO For Fishing Charter Websites
Budget Friendly Websites
Design Your Website for Vacationers
About three-quarters of bookings in vacation areas come from mobile devices. Most of them will likely be using mobile data which makes load time a top priority. Having a fast load time is also a factor in Google’s mobile indexing — which means better visibility where it matters most. Use clear, “Action-Oriented Layouts” mobile device visitors want to make a quick decision. Include prominent, easy-to-tap “Book Now” buttons and click-to-call phone numbers so customers can book in seconds — not minutes. Customers want to easily find the information which means you need to make sure navigation is easy and link names are easily understandable. Tip: Ensure all text and clickable images are large enough and not too close together to avoid miss tapping on mobile.
What Images To Use On A Fishing Charter Website?
What types of pictures you use should be based around the customers you are targeting.
Inshore Fishing Charter Websites
For charter boats targeting families we recommend including photos of inshore fish and kids having a blast along with their family. Plus showing off pictures of the boat's amenities! Having an enclosed salon, air conditioning and bathroom on the boat is always a plus when targeting vacationing families. A professional picture of the captain helps out a lot as well.
Offshore Fishing Charter Websites
If you are targeting offshore sportfishing or hard core fishermen using pictures and even better videos of big game fish is best (like marlin, bluefin tuna and sailfish). You really want to sell the excitement and adventure of fighting some of the toughest fish in the ocean! Highlight any equipment you have like Omni Sonar, outriggers, and fighting chair.
Need High-Quality Images for Your Charter Business?
Depending on your needs, our photographer can capture stunning photos of your boat or accompany you on a charter to snap incredible fish pictures for your website. Alternatively, we also collaborate with drone operators or photography companies we partner with to ensure you get exactly what you need to make your website the best on the Outer Banks.
Google Maps and Reviews
Ensuring your business is listed on google maps and information is kept up to date. Getting google reviews is also very important. Always send clients a follow up email or text after their charter with a link to review you on google and thanking them for choosing your business. After someone leaves a review its always a good idea to reply. This shows that you care about your clients and your business.
Make Booking a Charter as Easy as Possible
It can be hard to take a call out on the water when a customer calls and if you don’t answer they might book with someone else before you have a chance to call them back. Which is why we recommend a booking calendar. It's really streamlined the booking process and we have seen it increasing the booking rate as well as taking stress off the captain while they are out fishing with charter clients.
Using a commission-free booking calendar stops you from losing profits to online booking platforms. We can add a booking calendar to your fishing charter website so that you can advertise the best local rates and retain more revenue. Prefer to keep your listings with third-party services? The booking calendar can integrate with several other calendars including Google Calendar, Outlook and Icloud. You can also add a payment processor and take deposits and full payments easily.
Importance of SEO For Fishing Charter Websites
We always tell our clients not to expect website rank alone to guarantee anything in a competitive vacation area. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar. Between Marinas, Booking platforms and charter boats that focus on local marking It takes creating your own unique strategy. Your website is a tool to sell your services and as part of your business strategy. Website SEO is important but people find your business and website in a lot of different ways other than search. Well placed rack cards, visitors guides, marinas, and social media just to name a few.
Google takes things like how often you post on social media, reviews, how long you have owned your domain name, how often you interact with your google business profile, and more into consideration when ranking your website. It used to be that just website SEO was enough to get to the top now its way more complicated than that.
3 strategies To Boost SEO For Charter Boats
Google Maps and Local SEO
With more people looking on google maps it's important to make sure your are listed properly, description is optimized and profile is up to date. We have found that Local SEO search strategies that push your charter to the top of nearby results has been effective in beating competitors who rely on broad, diluted SEO. Also being selective with what search phrases we target and adapting when google rolls out a new search algorithm update.
Rack Cards
Rack cards with QR codes are a must! Placing them can take some thinking as the locations and rack card design should reflect the customers you are targeting. Some of our clients even use multiple rack card designs each for different locations to target different types of charter clients.
Post on Social Media
Creating and managing social media has been a game changer for our clients. We recommend YouTube, Instagram and Facebook for reels and Instagram and Facebook for image posts. It can be a lot of work but totally worth it for getting traffic to your website.
Flexible Management and Budget Friendly Websites
Trusted by charter captains from Hatteras Island,NC to Wanchese, NC and beyond. Choose from streamlined, affordable one-page sites to fully managed, unique multi-page websites with your choice of SEO options. Our sites are built with security best practices to reduce vulnerabilities common in CMS systems. Whatever website management plan you pick, your site will highlight what anglers and vacationers care about! Plus, with our commitment to ongoing support, you can rest assured that your site will continue to perform at its best, giving you a much needed edge in a competitive industry.
