NYCLittleItalyTours.com
The Evaluation
I was approached by the clients, Ralph and Ernest, about creating a simple website for a walking tour company they were in the process of starting up. These are the kinds of pro
jects we love here, new businesses, in their infancy, being created. I sat down with Ralph and Ernest and listened to what they were going to be doing and asked them some questions about the business and also some questions about themselves, which really helped us to form a great story and angle for the company.
At first, the only real thing they had was that they wanted to run these walking tours that would stop at these different spots and end up with a nice Italian meal included in the price. After sitting there and talking with them, I realized that they had a very interesting angle that they didn’t realize and definitely were not exploiting, their own experience with the neighborhood. See, Ralph and Ernest happen to be life long residents of the Little Italy neighborhood. They not only grew up here, but they are also members of various political and social clubs and organizations as well as business owners and employees in the neighborhood. This is really different from your average NYC walking tour guide or any tour guide book you could buy anywhere. This unique relationship between the neighborhood and themselves meant that they new a lot of the interesting details that no other tour guide could know, which could only mean a more interesting tour. This “neighborhood insider” angle I felt was the story this company needed to make them unique, and when I pitched this to Ralph and Ernest they completely agreed
The Process
Since this business was a total startup, they had nothing to incorporate as far as content, logo, or google indexed links, so we were working with a clean slate. This makes things super easy from a design 
standpoint as we have no real restrictions, but also difficult in that content like images needed to be generated. Over the years we have developed really close relationships with a lot of people, and in this case a quick call to my friend and wonder photographer Efrain and we were set. We dispatched him to Little Italy to shoot a few pics of an actual tour that was being given, and he came back with some great pics. Our relationship with him allowed our client to benefit by getting some quality images done quickly and at a nice discounted rate. This also allowed us to coordinate with the photographer to make sure we got all the shots needed for graphics for the site and that we got prompt delivery of the images to expedite the site construction.
Some of the interesting design elements:
- Banner. The client didn’t have the budget for a full pro logo design (which we handle here if needed) so we had our photographer take a suitable picture to use in place of the logo.
- Paypal integration. The client had no need or budget for a full ecommerce solution but did need a way to acept payment online for ticket sales. We worked with them in setting up a paypal account, then integrated that into the site for a nice simple payment solution.
- An events/blog page. We set up a page where the client can easily update the site to include announcements on special events or anything else they want to share on the site.
The Next Step
The client now has a clean, professional site to promote their business. The next step is a marketing attack. We suggest a combination of social network marketing using various tools on the internet, as well as using google adwords. We can set up and manage all of this, or set it up and hand it off to the client to manage themselves.
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