Of course with your website you get phone and email contacts regularly so this is of course great as you have a better idea of your bookings and during full occupancy you can indicate this on your website also.
However with many websites designed for bed and breakfasts there was no code put in place to tell you how many visitors to your website itself. Many B&B owners when I spoke with them said that their website was "doing well", "was ver yhandy for getting contacts".
However when I probed a little further they actually had no idea of the number of visitors to the site on a daily, weekly basis.
Tracking Visitors
By installing a small piece of code on each page *by someone who is technical minded) and creating an account with Google you can tell a lot of information about your visitors, what country they are coming from, what pages they visit and how long they are spending on the site.
With this information in hand you can improve your site and make the more popular pages more relvant and add more information.
Missing Information on Your Website
With this tool (called Google Analytics) you can also see what Google search terms were used to find your site and see if you actually had the information they were looking for (for example wheelchari access, special dietary information, or proximity to beaches local landmarks).
The most effective websites in the catering trade are always adapting. For example if there is a local levent in your area it makes sense to create a page about it on your bed and breakfast site advertising that you perhaps have special offers and showing how close you are to the event (even showing a map.
I talk in more detail on this in my article on News and Promoting Your Bed and Breakfast
Invisible Visitors
Online visitors for so many bed and breakfasts are invisible due to the lack of data collection. You should think of changing this today as although this was a bumper summer for accommodation the winter season is coming on us an you should start analysing this information at least weekly.
