Walking tour website and online booking in Belfast
A website for Belfast Hidden Tours built around one job: helping somebody planning a trip work out which walking tour suits them, then letting them book it there and then. Live since 2020, with FareHarbor handling availability and the tour pages doing the persuading.
Belfast Hidden Tours in numbers
The challenge: selling atmosphere
Belfast Hidden Tours run guided walking tours of the city, and their tours sell on atmosphere: the story, the guide, the parts of Belfast people walk past without noticing. None of that survives a plain list of dates and prices.
A visitor planning a trip needs to work out which tour suits them, when it runs and how to book it, usually on a phone and usually while looking at three other tabs. The site had to do that job without a phone call at the end of it.
They are also bidding for the same searches as the big sightseeing operators, on a fraction of the budget. That ruled out competing on volume and meant the site had to earn its traffic on the strength of the tours themselves.
Availability was the other half. Dates that are wrong on the site cost a booking and a complaint, so what a visitor sees had to be what the operator actually has open.
Our approach: lead with the tours
Belfast Hidden Tours take visitors through the parts of the city that do not appear on the standard sightseeing route, with guides who know the stories behind them.
The site leads with that. Photography of the tours actually running, a finder that narrows things down by the kind of tour someone is after, and tour pages that answer the practical questions of where it starts, how long it takes and what it costs before asking anyone to commit.
Everything these tours have going for them is visual, so the imagery is of the real thing rather than of landmarks. Guides in period costume, groups out on the street, Belfast weather included.
Booking runs straight from the tour page through FareHarbor, so someone who has decided while standing at a bus stop can act on it there and then, and the operator keeps one source of truth for their availability.
What we built for Belfast Hidden Tours
A small site with one conversion to protect, so everything on it either helps somebody choose a tour or helps them book it.
Tour finder
A filter that narrows the list by the kind of tour someone is after, so a visitor with two spare hours and a visitor chasing a Game of Thrones itinerary do not get the same page.
Tour pages
Where it starts, how long it takes, what it costs and who is guiding it, all answered before anybody is asked to commit.
FareHarbor booking
Booking runs straight from the tour page, so a decision made at a bus stop can be acted on at the bus stop.
Published departures
Bookable dates are published through the system, so the availability on the site is the availability the operator actually has.
Tour photography
The design is built around photography of the tours running, guides in costume included, because atmosphere is the thing being sold.
News and mailing list
A news section for new tours and seasonal dates, with Mailchimp sign-up for people planning a trip months out.
What Conor said
★★★★★
Amazing experience working with Element Seven. Looking forward to the future with them helping us with our online solutions and systems. Highly reccomended for any business but seem to have good understanding of the tourism sector in particular.
The Tech-Spec
Laravel on the back end with Vue driving the front end, and FareHarbor handling availability and payment so the operator keeps a single source of truth for bookings. Mailchimp collects sign-ups for the visitors who are planning further ahead, and the tour content is theirs to edit.
HTML5, SCSS, CSS3, vue.js
Laravel (MVC framework)
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, FareHarbor, Mailchimp
Services on this project
Most of our clients use more than one.
Bespoke websites
Designed and built from scratch around your business rather than adapted from a template. Every page and every field is there because it earns its place.
→ 02Booking systems
Take bookings and payments on your own site, around your own rules, without handing over a fee on every booking you take.
→More work
A few of the other projects we have built.
