Minutes of Board meeting of Shropshire Hills Tourism on Tuesday 14 March 2017 at Shropshire Hills AONB offices
Attendance: Bob Welch, Kay Dartnell, Louise Welsby, Paul Davis, David Palliser, Nigel McDonald, Sonja Belchere, plus Paul Hutchinson, Mike Brogden
Apologies: Catherine Evans, Caroline Magnus, Manager HPB, Cynthia Prior, Jack Limmond
One outstanding action from the previous meeting was organisation of Orientation Visits for this year. Action: Paul to look into visit to Presteigne area
Louise had created a feedback survey for the website, but with limited results from the panel. Action: Louise to try to gather more user responses
The focus of the meeting was to constructively improve the website and our PR. Jack had circulated accounts.
Website suggestions:
Remove the generated map of all members, and replace with a static map showing where the Shropshire Hills area sits within UK/Midlands
Replace the current downloadable map which has a watermark across it
Change the image slider at the top so that all images are bright and sunny (rather than mysterious as some are now). Make the images deeper if possible.
Give a roadmap of what the website contains and so reduce bounces
The Twitter feed slows initial upload. Remove the twitter feed and replace with an Instagram feed. Action: Louise to set up Instagram account and initially populate
Improve the drivers at the top so there is a call to action – Click to find accommodation, Click for what to do or use buttons
Market the area – Discover the historic market towns, and put a slider underneath so it dispalys quicker/smaller on mobiles.
Reasons why people might land on our pages – ensure we have Walking, Cycling, Heritage and Accommodation
Move Features, About, and Members to the bottom of the page. Remove the category “Partnerships” from the Features menu, which is actually the Blog. Use revolving blogs by pinning specific related themes to the top of the list, updating them annually and re-publishing.
Move the newsletter signup to just the members page
Events – the events page is well received, but covers all of Shropshire. Can we have a page for main events, plus a tag on events so just our region’s show?
We need a calendar of events onto which we focus advertising – perhaps one a month. Someone to write & own a blog page and then refer to that on all social media.
Improve Speed, in particular for mobile downloads. Speed up the sliders, make individual market towns onto one slider wich shows at random, remove extraneous plugins like Twitter. Look at options for running on a virtual server.
Request the AONB to link to the Visit Shropshire Hills site from their tourism link. Action: Nigel
Explore the potential for loading short videos onto site and using on social media.
Note Michelin star restaurants featured on the front page is incorrect. Paul H will need to edit or tell me how to get in.
Action: Claim our business on Google and point to Clun address. Get people to review to improve ranking.