Use Backpack to Help Build Your Travel Website

Running a travel website means that you probably do a lot of traveling. Doing a lot of traveling means not always having access to your personal computer. Many business travelers face this same problem, which is why web based applications are becoming so popular. Backpack is an organizational tool with a variety of uses that's based on the web. Because it is based online, it makes it the perfect to-do tool for any travel writer.

Backpack is the perfect tool for your travel website for many reasons. The main reason being, of course, that it's web based. So, no matter if you are in Tokyo or New Zealand, you can access your calendar, to-do lists, notes, images and more.

There are plenty of articles proclaiming the greatness of Backpack, but this article is about utilizing Backpack to help build your travel website. Backpack prides it's self on being multi-functional. Yes, it is built as an organizational tool, but can be setup to fit your own needs.

Building a Travel Website With Backpack - To-Do List

This section is obvious; you will use it to make a list of things that need to be done in order to get your travel website up and running. Go ahead and create a list of every possible thing you may need to do to get your travel website built. We will use Backpacks calendar feature later, to set deadlines to specific items in your to-do list.

Building a Travel Website With Backpack - Notes

The notes section in Backpack will be one of the most used features. Assuming you are starting to build your travel website from the ground up, you are going to label our fist note, Design Ideas.

In the design ideas note, you want to post links to other website that like design wise. Post a link to the website and a few sentences on what you like about the design of that website. Remember, you don't have to restrict your search for ideas to only travel website. Check hospitality, hotel, and even beauty websites for design ideas.

Each entry in this section should look something like this:

www.destination-abroad.com

· Liked the blog on the home page

· Nice navigation bar

· Good color scheme

If you will be adding travel affiliate links your website, you will want to keep them in order. It is easy to sign up and forget about affiliates. Create a note section labeled "affiliates." Create a link that goes directly to your travel affiliate log in page. This way, you don't have to waste time navigating from the home page to the sign in page.

Under the travel affiliate link, it can be helpful to type in information associated with the affiliate. You could include payout information, types of payout, or commonly used links.

Take this entry for example:

Amazon.com

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/login/login.html/104-6818059-3787129

· Associates earn up to 8.5%

· Sends quarterly payment to Associates.

Another good note section to have is "competitors". You should create a section much like one above. Add links to all of your competitors' websites. Make notes on their strength and weaknesses. This will help you design your travel website and keep tabs on other travel websites in your niche.

A competitors section is also nice because it lets you easily visit their websites to see what they have going on.

The amount of notes that could be useful are only limited to your needs and imagination. Some other examples of notes that would be useful to have handy when building your travel website are; important e-mail addresses, links to website designers, web tools to add to your travel site, SEO tools, and anything else you can think of.

Building a Travel Website With Backpack - Files

It is important to note that this section of Backpack only comes with paid accounts and not the free versions.

Assuming you have the paid version of Backpack, this is a great place to store data needed for the design of the website. Use this section to upload images, logos, and text files of information you want added to your website. Your web designer will love you for it.

This will make things easier for you and your designer. It will allow your web designer to access your files instantly, without having to contact you and ask for them. There are other ways you could hare this information, such as email or FTP, but Backpack just makes a great central location to share file and ideas when you can't do it in real time.

Building a Travel Website With Backpack - Writeboards

Writeboards are a great alternative to sending e-mails back and forth to your web designers and programmers. A write board is a central location where you can make a post and invite others to comment on it.

For example;

Lets say your designer is working on the navigation bar for the website and sent you some samples to look at. You could start a writeboard to discuss changes. This will not only give you a central location to discuss changes, but you can also have multiple people comment on the post. You could have your designer suggest changes as well as your programmer, all in the same location.

Building a Travel Website With Backpack - Calendar

Lastly, we will use the calendar feature to set deadlines for getting the travel website up and running. This will help you have a better idea of how long it will take to get your travel website live. It will also help you designer plan what and when they need to have things done. Your designers can also access the calendar and post their own timelines of when project will be finished.