Normally I hate websites that have automatic sound files, but what do you think to having the sound of radio traffic playing as a background track? It might help to evoke the atmosphere to a newbie. Just a thought............

Hi,

Wish you all the best.

Suggest you invest a grand in your website and get it done professionally:

Marcus Dalgetty at Balado spent 750 and got this:
Pegasus Microlights Scotland - Microlight Flying in Scotland

I think it looks great.

(I know our websites - especially the Strathaven one - need seriously updated, so not listing them. But, if you type certain key phrases into Google, they come up tops)

That is the other thing. Web optimise your pages. Don't need to pay anyone - indeed many "optimisers" don't know what they are up to, I feel.

That may mean rethinking your domain - ie flying_lessons_warwick .co.uk for instance. Think what the customers might look for, not what you want them to find. If no-one know that flying lessons are going on at Hinton, no-one will look for "flying lessons at Hinton". If someone is in Warwickshire and looking for flying lessons, they are more likely to search for "flying lessons in Warwickshire". I am sure you'll get my drift.

I suppose my Microlight Scotland - microlight flying lessons, trial flights and microlighting gift vouchers shows a fair bit of web optimisation - I think it comes up in the first 10 in the world for the word "microlight", for instance. Not the labels that appear when you "mouse over" photos. Not the miss-spellings of microlite etc in the photo mouse overs (you might want to look at "flite training" tucked in there, for instance.)

Finally, don't waste money on Yellow Pages, Thomson local etc!

(Keep it for flying, you'll need it at those prices!)

ps. Charge a fair bit more for trial lessons is the correct way. It is a lot easier to say to regular student Jimmy: see you next week at 10am, than it is to sell the voucher, answer questions, take a booking, answer all the questions, describe the route, answer the phone on the day for weather, meet and greet... etc etc etc. So you want paid for that.

(Yes, you do get the never redeemed vouchers. That is a plus. But no-one ever suggests that one should sell TFs cheaper than dual because of that!)

Web optimisation is largely dead now. Google is too clever and all the old tricks are obsolete.

What google does is measures relevance of the body text to the query, and measures how many people link to your site, etc. Nowadays, you can knock up a fairly specialised website and a few months later it will be the top hit on any remotely relevant query, despite having no meta tags, no "web optimisation", etc.

The best advice is to write a website with clear descriptions of everything, plenty of textual content (yes, people with money are mostly educated, despite appearances), written in good correct English, and avoiding Flash, big files, etc.

Paying google a few hundred quid a month to purchase key phrases like "flight training hampshire" is probably worth doing.

so, where is the club going to be based?

Just had a look at the site, nice and clear, good, full descriptions of what you are offering and everything that's included in the price...agree with wsmempson that it needs a map to show location.

For 'Trial Flighters' and newbies it would be nice to have the aircraft photographs captioned with their type e.g. '2 seater - Cessna 150' etc.

I'm tempted to visit, myself!

(also noticed a spelling mistake under Trial Lesson Gift Vouchers..."Hinton Pilot Flight Training, their staff and agents, cannot be held responsible for unsuitable weather, staff illness and unforseen technical issues effecting flight bookings." Should be 'affecting'.
:ok:

24/7
 

Drive up fuel by CC and lights (PCL) to cater for business use and winter ops.

In which case congratulations - I know from personal experience what the approval process is to offer modular IR courses, not a task for the faint hearted! Might it be worth posting your FTO number on the site as well, since Standards Doc 31 is some months out of date?

Just looked at the website, looks OK from the training point of view, though as others said, it could do with a tidy up from a good designer.

Despite the friendly flying club message though, the site seems all about training and nothing about the airfield. From potential visitors point of view, it needs airfield information, circuit details and perhaps weather links? A webcam is nice but not essential.

I think the website needs a little tidy-up but currently it is very quick, efficient, clear, and to the point, which is something that most intelligent customers appreciate, and that is exactly the sort of customer you want to attract ;)

A tip: unless you have a very good antispam service (I use Messagelabs, £400/year) I would present the email address as a graphic, not as machine readable text. I would also give people an enquiry form; this can be easily made spam-proof, and it ensures that you get reasonable information on the enquirer.

Yes; it needs pilot-visitor information also.

No exception here - even easier in fact, template manuals are available to be used in a "insert name here" process. Same with the Operations Manual requirements, most Flying Order Books or similar will suffice with a few changes. Costs? Yes, that could be trickier. Much like the recent re-registration of RFs at £100 a go after years of it being free. Sadly the cost will have to be passed on to the customer one way or another, the margins in most flying training simply aren't high enough to absorb excess fees - our own PPL training has a £1/hour margin, fortunately it's a sideline we rarely do! More painful were our £4000 FTO approval fees...

If Carlesberg made a flying club...
 

It would probably be as tasteless, dull and disgusting as the beer they brew. I'm thinking it would be something like the set up at Blackbush where that large training organization reside.

However, if a proper English brewery that produces proper English ale were to do a flying club.... It would be White Waltham.

Bolinger??! Bolinger my :mad::mad::mad::mad:!!!!

A good flying club should have the atmosphere of a pub with an airfield in the beer garden. It should have views of acres of lush green grass from the club house windows and have the sweet sounds of radial engines or Merlins starting up and the smell of oil and leather and..... Oh and the sound of whining pilots in the bar and amateur engineers swearing in the hangars.

Sorted.

I hear "Hinton Para" on the radio all the time. Is there much of a conflict there?

Charlton is a lovely village with a great (when I lived there!) pub. It may be worth including that.

Are you welcoming visiting pilots now? If so I will come over at the weekend!

(Wish I still lived in Charlton.)

I fly out of Hinton...."Hinton Para" is not a problem. We all talk to each other and it works well...

Where the "bar staff" refuse access to non-flying visitors? Err, I don't think so:hmm:

Too right, can't let the rif-raf in! ;)

Large Ape,
The term is riff-raff and I think that accurately describes some of the membership.:rolleyes:

Im not sure about riff raff- Im an licenced aircraft engineer which is generally considered by some to be the lowest form of life. So I suppose with me in there I have have started the standard pretty low and we can only improve.

"Test Flew" our new "sim" today which consists of a 42" TV, two sticks etc all coupled up to anew gamings computer running MS Flight Sim all in the front end of an old Katana Fuselage front end. You actually sit in the old cockpit and have the Screen in front of you. Intend installing it in the clubhouse for rainy days!. Just something of a bit of fun. Gonna charge £1 in the cancer research tin for a go!

:O

My VFR flight guide is 2010.

Who do we call for PPR now? I'll pop down tomorrow!

As a WW member it's not a term I have to use very often, o' Flappy one. I generally get my butler or his assistant to deal with such issues, since one doesn't like to get ones hands dirty shooing the great unwashed away. You'll have to excuse me I'm going for a massage at 7 followed by a coiffure....

Hi there, looks like more than one of us has been producing a free solution. Take a look at ours and see what you think. It is and will always remain free and for the good of the community.

Here is our welcome letter:

Just to let you know that with immediate effect our new booking system for for aircraft/groups/instructors is available. You will need to login and create an account as the administrator of your group and then add all the other pilots and planes and instructors. Its a painless process and it will will send all your pilots an email along the way to tell them they have been activated.

Like many of the people who will use this system I was dissapointed when the booking system we used, GoBoKo announced a charging structure that wasnt cheap so I have invested the first couple of years of what I would have spent to write our own booking system which does all what the previous one did. In addition I am providing the service free of charge to the aviation community so nobody else has to pay. The address of the new system is Aircraft Bookings and you can find out more about the system at Welcome to the Free Aircraft Booking Sytem - FABS

If there are any problem with the system please let me know as it is hot off the press so we may have missed something.

It is pretty self explanatory to use.

1. register the group and main admin pilot

2. Add a plane or planes

3. Add pilots

Thats it. You are ready to go.

You can add bookings by clicking on the start time and then the end time in the calendar or you can also add them by selecting the times under the calender and you can select the end day if it later than the start day of the booking.

You can also book instructors by ticking a box while ticking a plane. We will hopefully add later today so you can book instructors without the need to book a plane for groundschool etc.

We will try to include any suggestions people make although as it is free there is no promises. Just ask nicely and we will see what we can do.

Please give me your feedback. [email protected]

Remember the only payment is that you put a link on your website if you have one back to our siste to help it get found by the search engines and so other pilots can track us down. Please link to Welcome to the Free Aircraft Booking Sytem - FABS (the website) not aircraftbookingsystem (the actual booking system)

Thanks

Stuart