As promised in chapter 1 last week (disappointingly no one took a chance to guess), I can now reveal the exact purpose of the domain. SAguest.com is going to be a travel booking portal, using three booking engines to sell accommodation, car rental and air tickets for a commission.
HotelsCombined.com a lodging booking engine, it’s my preferred choice because it aggregates all the major booking engines on the internet into their portal. It offers a traveller a wider choice of properties to select from.
CarTrawler.com a booking engine for car rentals on the other hand is the only engine I’m aware of in the market and aggregates a number of well known car rental brands.
TravelStart.co.za will be my supplier for air tickets. It’s the only South African based air tickets booking engines and aggregates all local and international airlines to sell flight tickets.
I’m a huge booking engine (as proven by their integration on this blog on the right side bar and footer) supporter since this type of facility is all automated, meaning a traveller is able to complete a transaction without having any direct contact with the website publisher. As the website owner, you’re able to generate income from commission 24hours a day, without much effort, except to marketing your website.
All these booking engines not only offer South African products, but allow users to make a booking according to the country they’ll be visiting. Which means a traveller in Germany can make an upcoming travel booking in Mozambique, while still in Germany.
Now, having explained booking engines in detail, saguest.com on its own is just a skeleton. I need to brand it with colour, style and tagline so it communicates a message to the public. My tagline goes: fly.sleep.drive which represents the three booking engines which will power the portal.
You’ll book an air ticket in order to FLY.
You’ll book accommodation in order to SLEEP.
You’ll rent a car in order to DRIVE.
I outsourced my graphic designer through elance (a marketplace for freelancers) and he is based in India. On my brief I didn’t limit the graphic designer to any particular layout and style. I offered him the freedom to let his creativity flow through. He offered the below multiple mock-ups with four options, where I selected set 4, sample 4 based on it’s simplicity.
SET 1
SET 2
SET 3
SET 4
As per my reply back to graphic designer about my selection:
“I prefer set 4, sample 4.
Ensure the ‘t’ is the same height as the other letters next to it…
Change the ‘G’ into a small letter.
Change tagline colour into black, from the orange.”
Again my feedback to the graphic designer:
“the ‘t’ is still taller than the ‘s’?”
This logo set me back by $50 and I paid R406.00 at the end of the day based on exchange rate. You too can outsource all your needs through elance at very discounted rates from a freelance writer to a seasoned programmer.
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[...] a commission. The launch of saguest.com had been delayed for a month, since my last post titled: Chapter 2: Concept behind saguest.com and the logo . However I’m happy to announce that everything has been completed and the portal is now active [...]