Hi all. I’m hoping for any advice on selling my audio tours through my own website please. I’ve been reading this forum ‘Promoting and selling VoiceMap tours’ and there’s some useful stuff in here, although some of it looks a few years old now so may not be the best advice now.
Getting people to visit my website and find the page selling my audio tours is one issue, but then what is the best way to accept payment and send the tour codes? On the forum there is reference to using things like Fareharbor or a WordPress plugin (WooCommerce) or Giftup. Does anyone use these or anything similar and have any feedback please? Are they easy to set up and use? Do they cost much? I know PayPal has an option to redirect a customer to a specific webpage upon purchase, I already use that in another part of my website so they can access what they have purchased. It seems to work well but I think my PayPal account only allows me to set up one such redirection.
I think an immediate automatic response to purchasers with the code would be good but it looks like some do it manually, eg send an email with the code within a certain time. This might also need the option to purchase through VoiceMap at a higher cost if they need it immediately. Any thoughts on this method please? Obviously more demanding in responding to purchasers.
The two most common approaches to this are Fareharbor and Woocommerce @mart. There’s a fairly detailed explanation of how you can use Fareharbor here and you’ll find costs on their website, but there isn’t much info about Woocommerce on the forum. Did you make progress on using this @jerry3061?
Are you planning to sell on your own website at a discount? Nobody has done this before unless it was a time-limited discount, and I don’t think it looks good when you advertise your tour as more expensive when purchased through us.
It directs to VoiceMap for more info and purchasing plus I have some script on there from Travel Payouts that directs to the relevant Viator page automatically…
It seems to me that the payment gateways are taken care of and I know that FH have been causing some stress lately by increasing handling charges to many customers so I think to promote from a third part site like ours, the best way to go is direct buyers to VoiceMap where they get taken care of pretty well?
One thing would be good. @iain … Is there a way to see how much traffic goes to VoiceMap from my dedicated audio guide pages? Track the sales to see if they are converting?. My Ronda guide page gets over a thousand impressions a month and a minimum of 50 clicks, users, sessions etc.
I guess that your idea @mart is to sell the guide at a reduced rate with some kind of offer or loyalty scheme?
I have no problem with that method, it seems to work very well and VoiceMap are clearly more than capable of handling customers and payments etc. I’m just investigating if I can sell vouchers through my website instead, probably to see if I can make more money that way.
I was asking about offering discounts and have found others who do that, but appreciate as @iain says this might prove contentious so I would probably look to sell at full price or just below through my website.
Hi @mart , Your drives look really good! I am thinking of doing one or two for my area here in Andalucia so seeing yours has inspired me to get on with it soon!
Have you thought about offering the tours to hotels and guest houses along the route and especially at the start point? You could offer them packs of ten vouchers at a discount for example and they could re sell to their guests or even build the audio guided drive into their room package deal.
Maybe even the tourist office close to the start point would resell for you. Just have to agree a price and send them the vouchers as and when they need them.
That way you cut out all the issues of selling your self online and payment gateways etc etc…
Hi @clive. Thanks for the message. Glad you like my drives and they have inspired you! I enjoyed doing them. Bit different to the town walking tours I’ve done more recently. My audio drives get mostly good reviews but the odd more negative one is often down to factors outside of my control unfortunately. For example, an unplanned road closure or full car parks. So I think there’s more chance of negative reviews on drives compared to walks but they are generally selling well.
Yes I’ve seen mention of selling vouchers to local hotels etc in the forum before. It does sound like a good plan, especially at the three main Lake District tourist towns where my tours are based. I will have a look at that.
Tourist offices are managed by the National Park Authority here. I did approach them to sell my tours but the manager didn’t really want the extra work/hassle. However, he was kind enough to let me put up a poster in each office free of charge so I’m sure they do attract some customers.
My latest idea is to produce a leaflet for my 6 audio tours. Many attractions and hospitality venues have racks of leaflets advertising local attractions. These leaflets are often popular with visitors who might grab a handful. It’s going to cost quite a lot to get them printed and distributed but that will get them into many popular places across the area. I might need to double my current sales to make it worthwhile but I think that’s easily possible and want to give it a go.
I’m still thinking about the option to sell through my website. Probably depends how these other ideas go!
Hi we have a direct link to Voicemap through to our each of our tours here in Bali on our website
The main consideration always is how long and how many clicks to actually get to a tour. We find even asking website visitors to find the walk/tour that they are interested in, scrolling down and then hitting the LEARN MORE button which takes them directly to the Voicemap App Tour of their choice is often too much. And the drop offs are high. People want quick answers, and fast solutions - and the majority of conversions come about by heading straight to the Voicemap App. The main consideration always must be - how many times a customer must click to get to the tour that interests them. For example - Your website, choose the tour, the redirection to Voicemap, (or get a code) (make payment) etc etc then redirect to the App (if they dont have the App, download the App, enter their details, make the payment, download the walk. Many times they have gone and drop off. The usual industry standard is no more than 3 clicks. We use our website for information, and although it does have links straight into the App, the majority of our sales come about by sending people straight to the Voicemap App., where they can be exited by the walk information and then quickly converted to a download. with as few pauses or reroutes as possible.
Hi @baliwalkingtours, thanks for your post. I’m sure you’re right and we need to minimise the number of clicks required otherwise it puts people off. As I previously said, I’m planning to produce a leaflet for my tours which could have a QR code directing people straight to the tours page on my website from where they could make the purchase. So maybe not any more clicks than purchasing through VoiceMap. Either way there are quite a few clicks required before the tour is ready to go, that seems unavoidable.
I’ve approved your original post, so you’ll see the poster you shared above. The “pending for review” queue on here is just an extra layer of security, so whenever someone wants to post an image on the forum, it first has to be approved by the admin team. We usually try to review these as soon as possible but it can sometimes take a couple of hours, depending on when the post was submitted.
Yes, the image you shared is of the A4 poster we can share with publishers. We can also provide flyers, like the one below, for a specific tour. Anyone, regardless of the plan their on, can request a template of these to create their own. The templates are quite easy to edit in Photopea or Canva and all the information is already available on your tour page. You can also download the relevant QR code from your publisher dashboard, which will take the listener directly to the tour on VoiceMap.
For publishers on Priority, Pro, and Premium, or those who have purchased more than 20 voucher credits, we can customise these designs. We also offer additional custom design options for publishers on Priority, Pro, and Premium plans, or as part of our additional services.
Thanks @clive. Yes I’ve seen the VoiceMap posters and flyers, and discussed with @helene. The templates are set up for a single tour and look good for that. I might well use them for locations around each tour start point. However, I also want a professionally made leaflet that includes all 6 of my tours for distribution across the whole area so will have to look elsewhere to get that designed I think.
We have five tours and produced this flyer to combine each tour - however we did this when we had four tours and have since added an extra tour so will need to update the leaflet so that can become quite expensive to keep replacing brochures
We also have leaflets for each separate tour as well
Having said that printing here in Bali is relatively cheap and cost effective
We did a run of locations for our leaflets today which are distributed to various hotels travel kiosks etc.
Just be aware that generally these places are not good at keeping brochures tidy or in a position that is beneficial. We also have plastic display stands and find that other companies often put their brochures
on top of ours or we find them hidden under a desk.
Its quite a time consuming exercise to keep them all uptodate visible and filled on the stands
@baliwalkingtours that looks a good leaflet, I’ll be looking at something similar. It’s making sure they look appealing and contain enough information without containing too much.
In the Lake District there is a company that manages the racks that hold the attraction leaflets. So I would pay them to ensure my leaflet is kept stocked and tidy in the rack. It’s probably going to cost as much as the printing but I would rather know the leaflet is available and visible. They have several hundred such racks all across the area, in visitor centres, attractions and hospitality venues. So it should also ensure good coverage in many popular places. I’ve attached a photo of a typical leaflet rack.
