Heather Bayer:
So I'm really pleased to have with me for this very first episode in the SSTIR Crazy Month series, Chris Maughan of I-PRAC. Chris has been on the podcast a number of times and he's come along to help us out this week with Stay Wise Rentals to get them back on track. So welcome, Chris. It's an absolute pleasure to have you with me as ever.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here.

Heather Bayer:
I mentioned in the introduction that if anybody really wants to know about Chris and about trust, they should go to your LinkedIn profile.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah....,

Heather Bayer:
So there will be a link to that in the Show Notes. So please do go and follow Chris, he's the most prolific LinkedIn poster I've ever come across.

So if you want to know more about trust in any format, then go to that profile. But you're going to learn a lot in this episode anyway. So we're going dive.... oh, I shouldn't be using that word. Apparently we're going to dive straight in.

Seriously. That is me. That is not ChatGPT talking. So we're going to dive in right now to trust in the short-term rental business.

Chris. Trust is a cornerstone for direct bookings. At least you and I believe this. Just give us a bit of a background on why I'm saying that, and I'm going to you as the expert to deliver that pronouncement on why we should all be considering trust as one of the pillars of this business.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, look, I've been studying it for a long time. I've been in the short-term rental space for 24 coming up 25 years. Built my own property management company here in the South of France and I built that on the basis of trust, because I realized quite early on in our journey around 2005, that was what real guests were looking for in terms of booking directly with you as a company. So we leaned right into it and understood it. And I started to study it from the guest's point of view, from an owner's point of view and understanding the psychology of it. Now, everybody will understand, even if you take short-term rentals out of the scenario for a brief second, trust is in our decision making on a daily basis.

Everything we do, babysitters we're going to have for our children, what flight we're going to take to go from this state to this state, or this country to this country, which bank we're going to use, which friends we're going to go out with. There's always a subconscious level of real deep trust.

And this has brought to us from when we're like two years old, three years old, even before, because it's ingrained into us about trust, like you can't trust this, you can't trust that. And as we grew older, we take it into our decision making, on everything pretty much. So when it comes down to short-term rentals and the level of investment that people are making on a short-term rental, as in booking a property, we all know that it's probably one of the highest online purchases you would make. And probably the one that's the most riskiest, because too much relies on it going smoothly, because if you're traveling with children, if you're traveling for business, if you're responsible for booking for a group of friends and you're the one, you know, making that decision for where you're going to stay. There's a lot of responsibility on making that right decision.

So trust is where it all starts. And it comes down to that, looking at that particular website and thinking, and we've talked about this on your podcast many a time, that the subconscious due diligence of what is triggering, as we say in that cycle, what is triggering the negativity on somebody's website, what is triggering the negativity on a brand, on a name, on anything that can come of it, I can't find who the founder is or anything.

Everybody's got different views of where trust lies in their psychology, but we all know it matters. And if you haven't got it and you're not working on it, then your short-term rental business is going to suffer. And I could talk for hours on it, but that's pretty much it, if you're not working on it, your business is going to suffer. That's probably the best place to leave it on that.

Heather Bayer:
In this conversation, we're going to be talking about Stay Wise Rentals, which is a company that is having some difficulties. The first issue they have is all around trust, because they've seen a comment on a social media post, or a Facebook group, or somewhere that somebody has said, potential guest in fact, has said they thought their website looks "sketchy"; that was the word "sketchy". I don't know what sketchy means to you, but I've seen websites that I thought, Oh that's just..., I don't trust that and I think that's basically what sketchy means. It means they don't trust it. What do you think that is on the Stay Wise website that has got this site visitor using that word? What are they immediately noticing or maybe what they're noticing that's not there?

Chris Maughan:
Probably the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that it's very basic. That you won't feel that there's any effort gone into it. Imagine if you went to a boulangerie or a cake shop and you went and you looked in the window and you just saw a really basic plain pie. And then to the left of it, you saw something that you could see somebody just put a little bit more effort into it, put some cream and some fruits and different things. And you can just see straight away which one you prefer. Like the majority, it's that virtual visual that you first see.

And again, quality is a subconscious thought as well. So as soon as you land on a website, very quickly, if it's quality or not, if you walk into an apartment, if it's dirty or clean or well prepared or not, it's a subconscious instant thought that you can get very quickly. You don't have to search too much. It's instant. So that's when you get this first impressions last scenario. So as soon as you've landed on it, it's probably very basic. It's probably designed by what we were talking about before, like Wix, or yeah something very....

Heather Bayer:
Or a template.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, it's a template, it's a template website. It's something to say, look, we're here, but that's all we're going to give you. And it'll probably have a menu bar with maybe three, maximum four titles, which one of them will be a Contact Us. One of them will be Our Properties and one will be Services. 1-2-3. That's pretty standard /basic. The name of the company will be probably not very clear and the website itself will just be very... On the eye it just won't be very inviting for you to continue that journey on saying, Ah this looks interesting. And again, it might probably..., it probably doesn't identify to the guest that they're in the right place.

That's one of the biggest aspects that these companies fail to achieve is that you arrive on a website and you have to understand that from a guest point of view, you're trying to solve their problem. Now their problem is accommodation problem. We've got nowhere to stay when we're going to this destination.

And we know from destination marketing, it's always about destination first. Then it's the, we're going to a wedding. Let's find accommodation. We're going to work. Let's find accommodation. We're going on holiday. Let's find the..., it's destination first. So when they're arriving on this website, it's like they probably don't even feel that they are on a website that's going to solve their problem. If you go to New York, does it say, best properties in New York City or trusted properties in New York City, or does it identify where you operate? And so many property managers fail to get that instant message across within the first two seconds of arriving on a website.

So I would say it would look very basic, very bland, not on brand, or zero brand identification or ID and that would probably fail to get any interaction of clicking onto a second page.

Heather Bayer:
It's interesting you talk about location, because I've been onto so many websites, I spend a lot of time just scrolling around, looking at different websites, there are so many. I guess the owners are so immersed in their own location that, or maybe they've got their own town. It's as if I had my website and it just said Cottage Country.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, that's a problem.

Heather Bayer:
I know where Cottage Country is, but Cottage Country, Ontario, Canada, just adding in that location specific, because I've been to websites and where are you?

Chris Maughan:
Yeah.

Heather Bayer:
Lake George? Where's Lake George? You know where Lake George is because you live there. Site visitor doesn't know that.

Chris Maughan:
And they will automatically think because people also have to understand from a psychology point of view, like booking a property isn't enjoyable to a degree. It's not enjoyable until you've actually completed the process and then you can start looking forward to the actual stay. You know what I mean?

But the actual procedure that you go through of the due diligence, that Can we trust them? Oh, is this going to be right? Is this probably the right one? What about this one? This one looks better. This one's close to the beach. What do you want? You got maybe two or three people. I prefer that one. It's got a bigger bedroom. It's quite a painful process for a guest when they're doing it.

Your job as a property manager on your website is to make it like really seamless and people don't have a lot of patience when they're trying to find a property. So if they land on your property and they've got no idea that you are operating in the area that they are looking to accommodate themselves in. That's then three or four seconds of frustration and don't know whether they're in the right place, nine times out of 10, they'll click off and go and maybe redo their search and put a different search in the search bar. It's, I'm going to now put in again and click on somebody who's got the name of the destination in their website. And there's a lot of people who put like 'Chic Rentals' as their company name, but Chic Rentals, where? Like where? My company in Cannes, right? 24 years ago, we bought the domain name, Cannes Apartment Rentals. That's it, because everybody's looking for an apartment to rent in Cannes.

So the three words that you, on SEO, from a search point of view, you come up to the top. Chic Rentals? Nobody's going to find that. So you've also got to be careful about stop choosing names that don't solve the guest's problem. Don't identify that they know that they're on the right website, because that's what they're looking for. And that's one of the biggest problems these website people are making on the homepage. And you haven't even got to the other pages. I said on your last podcast, some people, they don't concentrate enough on the homepage, and then there's not enough continuity in the other pages, but you've got to get people on that homepage thinking I am in the right place to solve my problem.

Heather Bayer:
So let's stick on this homepage, because you've come up with..., you've talked about a couple of things. One is the nav bar and what's in there. There was, a contact number which should be a genuine contact number, or email address that is not a Gmail address.

Chris Maughan:
Absolutely.

Heather Bayer:
So you see often on websites, the more modern websites, that you click on the page and it's just one enormous image and usually a video image. And often they're very nice, they're eye catching, but what do you think about them? Are they doing the trick?

Chris Maughan:
No. It might look nicer, but if you have your address of the company and the property, or, it depends on who you are as a business, or if you're an individual owner. But I think hyperlinks are much better for people to be able to click on and be able to go to that particular address and see if it's where they wanted to be. Making things that look nice, but make the guests have to work to get what they want is bad for business.

It's why you say I've always said it, a good looking website doesn't mean it's a good one. Oh, wow, my website's beautiful. Yeah. But is it set up for conversion? Is it designed for conversion? Is it designed for navigation ease?

And these are the questions that you've got to be asking yourself. And nine times out of 10, they're not, they're designed to make my company look good. But in the eye of a guest who's trying to navigate it, they're pulling their teeth out.

Heather Bayer:
So what else should go in that nav bar? So a bad one is probably got three or four at most.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, the about bar isn't the problem so much. It's when you click on the link to the About Us page, or the Contact Us page, or if you include a destination page. Or our partners page or our community page or our terms and conditions or, all of these kind of things that should be at the forefront of your guests questions, because if they want to know what the cancellation policy is, have it in the navigation bar. Don't make them search for it. Like, where the hell is this?

Like 'Our Apartments' and then list them all so they can click. Make it easy; two bedrooms, three bedrooms, four bedrooms. Don't make it complicated. So your menu bar is important and you've got to include the most important titles, but then when you click on that and that page comes up, you can't have an about us page with four lines.

A Contact Us page that's just call us. You've got to go into it so that when somebody gets there, it's your office opening hours, what do you do if you need to call us after 9pm at night?

All of this Contact Us is about social media. It's about email. It's about What's App. It's not just a phone number and an email. There's so many of the things that you can outline of how you can contact us. And that's when you can have a video of the founders, because it's like, who are you contacting? This is who you're going to be contacting.

If you call me, you're going to call our team, you're going to call the secretary, Lindsay, and this is Lindsay. Look, this is a picture of Lindsay. You know what I mean? It's inviting. It's not always about the menu bar, it's the content you put on that particular page as well. And if it's designed around and the content is trust content written. It's not just written like quickly in a couple of minutes, I'll put that on my, no, think about it. Look at other websites, what other people are doing and how you feel when you look at a contact us page, bland with zero information, or you look at a contact us page that's got interaction. It's got more detail. It's got trust. It's got, you know what I mean? I'm going to send...., because not everybody instant books, no very few people have got enough trust for instant book. So most of the people are either going to send an email because you can click on the email address or they're going to call, or they might not call straight away, because they don't want to get into a salesy conversation.

So they're probably going to get into a, send an email. So that email [address] needs to be hyperlinked, but you need to say, why should you contact us? Contact us for what? Have you got a question about our company? Contact us. Have you got a question? Why do people contact us? And list the reasons why, because people might think Ah. Because some people think, I'm not going to call them and say, Have you got two bedrooms? They're going to say of course we have, they're on the website.

Make it easy for people to understand why they're going to contact us. And it's seamless because people feel, oh yeah, I can contact them to understand certain things, so making it more interactive and more like that you care and that you're adding that trust factor and that hospitality touch to it, sprinkle a little bit of hospitality on your pages is good because it keeps people engaged.

And they don't feel like, because we all know you can lose trust at any time in a website navigation journey. And it can be, you might catch them on the homepage and they go to your property page, but they might go to the contact us page and you might lose them there, because you haven't put enough effort in there, but you've put all the effort on the homepage. So you've got to be consistent throughout all of your pages on brand and putting the same level of effort into every page. So I would say Stay Wise have just gone to a.... they've looked at the budget and they've thought website, find the cheapest possible option and let's get it up there. And that's probably what's happened.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah. I think what happened is they started out relying on Airbnb and Vrbo and realized that it was important to have a direct book website, but they haven't considered why they're doing that. Because everybody's out there saying, oh, you've got to have your own website, you've got to have your direct book website, but nobody's saying this is the reason why you have to have this. And the reason is you want people to trust you to book direct with you.

Chris Maughan:
Absolutely. And what they've done is sometimes you can do more damage than good by putting out the wrong content or the wrong website, because if you're not going to do it right, don't do it. And that goes to a website as well. So if you're going to move away from Airbnb, don't think that a direct booking website on a, done on a penny, is the way forward, because you're going to lose trust that you can't get back.

Like you can't come back with a brand new website and go, look at it now. You've got to start from the best. You've got to start from scratch and build the right one at the start. And then start..., I've always said you cannot send people to a website that's got no trust because you'll do more damage than good.

So if you're not going to invest in it properly, then don't do it at all and wait, if you don't have the budget, find a way to do a contra deal or find ways to make sure, but do not put a website out there that's going to damage your reputation, because you won't get bookings and you'll just damage your brand. If you've even got a brand.

Heather Bayer:
Tell me about the word trust on a website, on a homepage and to actually use it in that top third. And when we talk about the top third, it's the, it's that first... above the fold. It's the first place you look at.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, you don't need to scroll. It's as soon as you come up, that's what like you're not scrolling anywhere or clicking. And there's a psychology report that says that if you listen to a word seven times within two minutes, you're more recognized to remember that word. Okay?

So if you put trust on your website, one time, it's probably not going to have a lot of impact, but as somebody's swaying through your website and they're feeling that word trust coming around, which is what we call trust content when people are writing. So if you can get it featured three or four times on your home page, then you're gonna have success with that.

And there's a reason for it, because when somebody's arriving on your home page, they don't know you from Adam. They don't. Their job now is to do the due diligence on you, to see whether you're going to be the company that they're going to book with. So they've got a lot of questions, they've got a lot of subconscious due diligence to get through, and they're going to do it, whether you like it or not, they're going to go through it. So trust is a word that is subconsciously, that's what they're looking for; subconsciously. Can I trust this company to book with? So the word trust is already subconsciously playing around. So when you see trust on a homepage above the fold quite early on, obviously in the journey of the navigation of the website, that they're going to home in on that, because it's important. We've discussed this before and there's certain terminology you can use like 89% of our guests book direct because they trust us, here's why. Okay? Maybe you don't have 89% of guests book direct. So just say our guests book direct because they trust us; here's why.

Now, any new guest seeing that is going to be more intrigued to home in on that and go there. Guests book direct, which is what I'm looking to do. So you're linking that. I want to go and find out why the other guests are trusting them. So when they click on that, they're going to go to a trust page, which we've always talked about trust pages, about us pages. But if you use that word trust on the homepage above the fold, but not just use it as a word, actually send them somewhere where you're going to start using trust content, i. e. like your certifications, your safety policies, your local community involvement, your cancellation policies, your hospitality values, some reviews, authentic reviews, people are going to look at that page and go, Now I understand why the guests booked direct, because they trust them. You validated it. You can't just use words. You've got to validate the action. Otherwise, it's easy to use the word trust, but if you can send them somewhere where they are going to feel it, you're going to engage them in the trust, then they're going to be more attracted to you as a brand because you've addressed it. But you've got to use the word trust because it's a word that people need to hear. They want it. They need it. So why not give them it?

Heather Bayer:
I love that idea of saying, people trust us or, people like to book direct with us because they trust us and here's why; I love that. But we've talked before about trust versus about us page. Is it one and the same or two different pages or, can you combine them into one? If you do, what do you call it?

Chris Maughan:
You can definitely combine them, but yeah, that's the issue. For me, I think trust and about us, I think they should be separate. My opinion is I think they should be separate. And I think, and the reason why is because you have to call an about us page an about us page. Okay? But you can't call a trust page, right?

Heather Bayer:
So what do you call it?

Chris Maughan:
Sorry?

Heather Bayer:
So what do you call it?

Chris Maughan:
Yeah. Yeah. Like, Why guests trust us. That's is on the menu bar, because if you just put trust or trust page, it's what? Oh, they've got a trust for their kids. What does it mean? You might know what it means, but you've got to make the guest understand what it means when they're on your website. So if you look at a menu bar and about us, okay, I'm interested in knowing about the founders, that's very important. A lot of, and I know you were very big on that and you always look at a website and you go straight to the about us page before you go to the navigation page. I am sure, I bet my house on it that you're not the only one. About us pages are very important. So I would have an about us page and concentrate on about us, because it is about the founders, why we founded the business, how long we've been in the business, who works within the business, why we do what we do, so that can be like a video of the founders. That's about us.

Trust is a bit different. And trust is more about values, your mission statement, your certifications, your policies, your professionalism, your reviews, validation, all of these are the factors that come into it.

Now, if you put all that on an about us page it's, God, this guy's got an ego, hasn't he? So trust is all about saying, this is why you can trust it. And these are the factors that are important, which is certifications, payment guarantees, credit card payment, your cancellation policy, all of these different factors that when people read it, they know they believe it. You're, you're tapping into the psychology of confidence and trust and reliability. And this is the kind of wording that you use on there. And if you turn around and put at the start of that, trust is important for our guests because we believe at Stay Wise, for example. Okay? Because they probably didn't have this on their site: At Stay Wise, the foundation of our business is built on trust and providing the trust for our guests to book direct and have a fantastic stay and walk away from our properties with fabulous memories, right? Something on those lines in the first part of that trust page, is like, I'm reading on, I'm not clicking off here, this is what I want to hear. And you're backing it up with things like, ...And because we take trust to a higher level, we've spent money investing in I-PRAC Certification, Breezeway Certification for our health and safety. We do safety audits on all of our properties. We have a guest-centric cancellation policy, everything that you're putting on there is basically what they want to hear, but you're not lying.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah.

Chris Maughan:
So I don't want anybody thinking that, Oh, these are great tips, let's just put them on there. No, because if you don't do what you say you do, then you're not building any trust. You're going to get found out. People are going to arrive, they're not going to rebook with you, because they're going to know you've lied on your website.

So you've always got to deliver what you say you're going to do, because that is the biggest trust indicator. Deliver.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah. And that's where uncertainty comes in, because you talk about uncertainty a lot as almost being the opposite of trust. So what I'm hearing you say is that every single page of that website has to allay that uncertainty and deliver a feeling of trust in its place. So when you talked about cancellations or payments, a payment policy terms and conditions, every single page has to address the trust issue and stop people feeling uncertain about it. So do I get that right?

Chris Maughan:
100%. That is exactly the job of a property manager who is looking to build a direct booking business. It's find out what the uncertainties are, and fix them, relate to them through your content on your website, like the frequently asked questions is always a good one, right? But then everybody hides it away on page seven of the footer of page seven that nobody's ever going to see.

So why not put the FAQ on the menu bar? And don't call it FAQ, call it questions you may have. Make it simple because this is what people are thinking. People who like all these beautiful terminologies that are all cliquey and cliche and they're using words, but the guests really relate to them.

I don't think they do, and I don't think people get to page seven of a website if they haven't got trust. So use that menu bar, and deal with the uncertainties, because uncertainty is the killer of conversion. 100%.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah. And you mentioned cancellation policy. And I remember in my own company we had a cancellation policy, but it was hidden away. We had rental terms and conditions and within those rental terms and conditions, you had to scroll all the way down there to find cancellation policy. This is going back 10 or 15 years, so we made the changes. But now if I was redoing that website, I would have that very clear in the navigation, because people want to know now. I booked a hotel the other day and my immediate thing what if I want to cancel?

Chris Maughan:
Yeah. You want to know straight away.

Heather Bayer:
I want to know straight away, I want to know, can I bring my dog, what if I need to cancel? There was another question that it didn't answer and I can't remember what it was, so it can't have been that important, but yeah what about cancellation? So I would say to anybody who's listening to this, Go to your website right now and, as a guest, and look to see if they can find your cancellation policy in one click.

Chris Maughan:
And there's two ways to look at that because a lot of property managers, they have not studied cancellation policies. They've probably copied somebody else's, and pasted and copied somebody else's on their own website, and if they're honest, they haven't studied their own cancellation policy.

We've designed our cancellation policy over 24 years and it's still changing, because it's adapting to new technology that we can find. New insurances that we can implement that can make it. But what most property managers are doing wrong is they're not concentrating on the cancellation policy to be guest-centric.

So of course, if you turn around and say, cancel six weeks prior and lose all your money, you're going to hide that. You're going to hide that cancellation policy for sure. But if you're transparent about designing a cancellation policy that is transparent, it protects the business, because people have to understand cancellation is..., it happens, but the business can't turn around and say, Oh, cancel when you want and there's no fees. From a business point of view, that's not good in a direct booking business. It works for Airbnb because Airbnb hold the money and they can control how the money's distributed to the property manager.

And the property manager doesn't have any say in it really. If you argue with us, we'll throw you off the platform, that's another problem to talk about another day, but the fact of the matter is that if your cancellation policy is designed for guests to feel, Oh, this is good. And you can now, because with insurances and technologies, if you invest in them, you can make sure that a guest can cancel 48 hours up to their date with a full refund. And there's insurance policies that can cover that cost. You've got to look at how you can deliver a guest-centric policy, because they're going to ask for it.

If it's not guest-centric, they're not going to sign and book with it. Against it, God, if we cancel within three weeks of the stay, we lose everything. And the fact of the matter is that when you're booking direct, you don't have an Airbnb platform to go and say, listen, I'm cancelling, give me back the money. The money's either with the property manager, or the owner and they have to give the guest the money back. So you've also got to be, one, respect your own cancellation policy, but design it in two ways, guest-centric and to protect the business. And once you've done that, then you can shout about it loud and proud on your homepage, because people are going to love it. But most people who hide it away on page seven, or you can't find it, it's because it's not guest-centric and if people did read it, they wouldn't book.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah. And if they eventually get there, then on either things, they can't find it. Therefore they'll bounce out

Chris Maughan:
Absolutely.

Heather Bayer:
Or they do find it and bounce out.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah. Working on your cancellation policy seriously, like with a lawyer, with insurance companies, with technology that's out there that can help you be more guest-centric, work on it, write it out properly. You know that it's designed for your business, not a generic one that you've took from a competitor's website or, I'll paste and copy that and put it on our website. No, that's not how it works. Design it properly, spend the time and effort and do it right and then market it as a trust tool.

Heather Bayer:
Great job. So let's go back on Stay Wise. So they've had this negative feedback. This is damaging. So what immediate steps can they take to mitigate that damage?

Chris Maughan:
The first thing that you would have to do is answer the post. You'd have to answer the post and put your honest answer back to explain why that is the case. And nine times out of ten is that you've got to be authentic and honest about your response. So the first thing to do would be to accept your responsibility that you've delivered a website that doesn't build enough trust for the guest and you apologize and you would say we shouldn't have launched it. We are working on a new one and that will be around in six to seven weeks time. We apologize. We hope you can come back in the future, but please note that's not the standard of what we do.

Answer the post is step one, with honesty and with authentication and just be honest, because honesty builds trust. But then learn from that, because we all know, and I've said it many a time, negative data is positive data.

So you must look at it and think okay, let's accept our negativity. Let's accept our responsibility. How can we do better? Then realize where you're going wrong. So acceptance. And then what are you going to do to fix it?

So the first thing you're going to do is say let's get rid of this website. Okay? How quick can we get another website up? Do we close this one down completely? Probably. Let's just put a homepage up, contact us, website under development, and go to work building a brand, on a website with a brand. Speak to web developers and get them to understand what you're looking for on a website.

So that would be step two, but make sure you know what you want to build. Do the research on, don't just go and speak to a website guy who does websites for, I don't know, for a window cleaning company and then go and speak to a specialist and say, listen, I want to deliver this website, but it's got to be trust orientated and these are all of the things I want to include. Put the effort in, put the effort in.

Heather Bayer:
And there are a number of really good web companies in this business that focus on these websites, on these really high quality websites.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, they do.

Heather Bayer:
ICND, Realtek Webmasters, Realtek built our site for CottageLINK Rental Management and we worked with them over time.

We knew the message, you can get the best web designer, but if exactly as you said, if you don't know what you want and how you want to present yourself and how you want to promote your brand on that site, it all means nothing. And you can spend a lot of money getting something that is really not effective if you don't know what you want out of it.

Chris Maughan:
This is the thing, do you know? And if you don't know what you want, go and find..., this is one of the biggest things in the industry. If you don't know, there's somebody who does. So go and find out who does know and ask them.

I've always been somebody like if I don't know, I'll go and find somebody who does and then I'll go and say, listen, can I have half an hour of your time, and they'll nine times out of 10, they say yes, and you go and pick their brains and you get the information that you need. I give free consultancy all the time. I could charge a lot of money for it, but I don't because it's not what I want to do. But you go out there and if you don't know what you want or you don't know how it should be and then accept that. It's okay if you don't know, but go and find somebody who does and say, give me a way of understanding how I can build this website, because I want to pass the brief over to my website designer so that he can deliver a high trust content, convertible website.

And then, okay this is what you need to do. Don't do this. Don't do that. Make sure he does this. Make sure he does that for whatever you do. Don't do this. Make sure above the fold it's this. You could probably get six or seven pages of quality information, but probably just listening to this podcast could be enough to go and send the link to your web design and say, watch this podcast first, and then start thinking about designing my website and tell me how you're going to do it.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah. My idea, just take the transcript, feed it into ChatGPT and ask it questions.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah. Is it? Yeah.

Heather Bayer:
What are the main things that came out of this podcast....

Chris Maughan:
Absolutely.

Heather Bayer:
...that I should do right now?

I don't listen to podcasts that much anymore.

I do exactly that. I take the transcripts. I get the key points and then I convert that text into audio and then I've got a shortened podcast to listen to.

Chris Maughan:
Yeah, this is technology at its highest, isn't it? And it's true. I don't really use it that much. I understand ChatGPT a little bit, but I've finished building really my business now. But back in the day it was all manual. It was me sitting in front of a computer with the web designer. Change the font. I don't like that. Change that, put that word over there. Don't like that. No, I don't like the logo. That logo is terrible. Yeah, but I've designed it six times. We're going to design it again. I don't like it. Give me another seven options. Because if you're not in it and breathing it and know what you want and looking at it from a guest point of view.

And we've talked about the fact that the focus groups, it's, now I've delivered it, before I'm putting it out to market, thinking that it's great. I'm going to put a focus group of five to seven of different..., there's companies who do that for you now. You can give your brief to a focus group company and they will focus group it for you and then you will get a lot of negative feedback, a lot of positive feedback and you'll know where you're coming from.

Go and book a two bedroom apartment on this website. Tell me where you found it. Tell me where you found it difficult. Tell me where you lost trust. Tell me what level of trust would you give each page? Ask the questions. And that information that comes back is so valuable data. It's right? This is, it's not one person said this, all five said it. So we need to change that. So step one for Stay Wise, so we can keep on point, answer the post.

Two, go to work on designing your website and your brand, and get people's opinion of, if you don't know. And three, test it. Put it to market through a focus group, or, if you can't afford a focus group, six people you might know, and you ask them to be honest. And you ask them to be honest because your business success relies on their honesty. I don't want to hear that. Oh yeah, you smell lovely when you don't.

It's one of them factors. But test it, find it. And you should be doing focus groups every six months as you develop. But at the same time, you are putting something out on the market that the general public, when they land on it, they're going to go, this is a brand I want to book with.

Heather Bayer:
Yeah.

Chris Maughan:
And that's all it is. And that's the job, that's all you've got.

Heather Bayer:
So for those people listening today, if they're now thinking, oh, I really ought to go look at my website. Absolutely yes, you should be doing that frequently,

Chris Maughan:
Yeah.

Heather Bayer:
And looking at it with a very critical eye and, maybe, yes going out and finding your own personal focus group to go take a look.

Is there a checklist, is there an audit checklist, or do they create one themselves? I think they could probably go through this podcast and pick out all the pieces that they need to be looking for.

Chris Maughan:
There is probably... We're launching TrustScore in February '25, which is basically an audit, it's an AI tool that we've invested very heavily in with AI developers that is going to trust test a brand on 127 trust points. Okay? And we'll give an overall score from one to 10. Okay? And if you get a seven or below, we would advise you not to put that on your website. Seven and above, it's the direct booking sweet spot. So you can put, we've got an I-PRAC trust score of seven. Some people might achieve a 10, but in testing, there's only one company who has.

But we give them the report on how they can, we give them the trust score and then the report on what they need to do to improve it. And then they can come back and do the trust score again and constantly improve. So we're like a navigation platform for building trust on your brand and on your website. So that's launching in February. We'll have that as like the feature of and we'll maybe give the, the first hundred people of the podcast to, to use the trust score for free. . Yeah, we'll give a code and then people can understand where they're going wrong and how they can improve.

It's worth thousands, but we're building it out for 240, 249 pounds. So it's a great tool, but you don't, but if you want to get better, you've got to be, in depth into your website. It's your real estate. It's your open window. So the audit, you must look at certain aspects and make sure that you're delivering on the basics.

So start with the basics, like the big no nos. And then, And work on it. But I would say to anybody, if your website's not good, you will know, you will know if you give yourself an honest or if it needs improvement. And then go and find a way to invest in it. There is no better investment than a website for a short-term rental property management company.

You can invest all you want in guest experience apps in, in, in guest flow apps in, whatever you want to call it app, but websites is what guests look at. Guests don't want complicated things. And it's very easy. If you're going to ask a guest, what do you want? They want trust, safety, seamless booking process, and that's it.

So don't complicate it. Get your website on point.

Heather Bayer:
That's fantastic. And that is a good moment to finish. As ever, Chris, we could just talk forever on this, but we're going to wrap this one up now. I'll make sure that everything we've talked about is in the Show Notes and a link to, the trust score so you can go take a look at that and there will be a prize for those who go and do the trust score and document it.

You will get points in the SSTIR Crazy leaderboard for doing that.

Okay, Chris. Thank you so much, as ever insightful. We'll be seeing you this week in the panel, the trust panel. And until then thank you once again.

Chris Maughan:
You're welcome. It's always a pleasure. Thanks, Heather.

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