Where it started.
Marc Leroi hosts weddings in a former Béarn farmhouse, at Arudy, in the Ossau valley. The venue worked: receptions, a gîte, a studio, and a solid local reputation. Everything came through word of mouth and a Facebook page.
The estate had no website at all. Which means, very concretely, that no enquiry could arrive through the internet, and that a couple looking for a venue in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques could not find it, even if they wanted to. It is the situation I describe in how to find clients for your venue: the demand exists, the path is missing.
What was done.
Eight pages, in French and in English. An art direction built around the stone and the wood of the valley, rather than around a wedding website template. The existing photographs sorted, retouched and optimised, the gîte and the studio each presented as a series of images rather than a single photograph, because one image does not let you visit a room.
And above all an enquiry form, wired straight to Marc's inbox, visible from every page. What it asks for is not left to chance: it asks for what lets him answer usefully the first time.
Eight days passed between the first call and going live. That is not the normal timescale, it is the timescale a simple brief and an owner who replied within the hour made possible.
What it produced.
Fourteen enquiries received through the form in the month that followed going live. On an estate that received none through the internet, since there was no path for them.
The figure deserves to be read correctly. These are not fourteen weddings, they are fourteen people who wrote. What happens next depends on Marc, on his venue and on his way of hosting. But fourteen conversations that did not exist a month earlier is exactly what a website is meant to do.
What I take from it.
The striking part is not the figure, it is what it reveals: the demand was already there. People were looking for a venue in that valley and were not finding Passiflorart. The website did not create the desire, it simply stopped letting it pass by.
That is the case for most of the venues I call. They do not have a quality problem, they have a front door problem.
The questions I am asked next
Fourteen enquiries in a month, is that a usual result?
No, and that needs saying. Passiflorart started from nothing: no website, therefore no possible enquiry through the internet, on a venue already known locally. The jump is mechanically larger than on a venue that already had a site and receives a few enquiries. What does repeat from one venue to the next is the starting observation: the demand was there before us.
Eight days from the first call to going live, is that the normal timescale?
No again. The timescale I commit to is four weeks at most. Eight days were possible because the brief was simple and Marc replied within the hour. What lengthens a project is almost never the code, it is the back and forth on the texts and the photographs.
Fourteen enquiries, how many signed weddings is that?
That is not what the figure measures, and I am careful not to suggest otherwise. Fourteen people wrote. What follows comes down to how you host, how you reply and how you show people around, which belongs to the owner. A website brings conversations, it does not sign on your behalf.
What does a site like this cost?
The price of the build is given on the call, because it depends on the number of pages, the languages and the state of the existing photographs. What is public and fixed is what comes afterwards: 190 € a year for hosting and the domain name, 90 € per change, and nothing else. No licence, no compulsory subscription, and the source code is handed over to you.
The site is live and can be visited: passiflorart.fr. Figure taken from the form counter, published with Marc Leroi's agreement.
