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Fishing Guide Website Design Done Right

Chris Hustad • Dec 17, 2022

Are you a fishing guide or charter, and have too many openings? Is your phone not ringing? Or are you looking for hunting guide website design?

Flyway Media has been designing fishing guide websites for over 22 years, and our client's success is proven time and time again. Let me explain why...*

What Makes a Good Website for Fishing Guides?

I can literally remember making my first fishing guide website like it was yesterday. It was right before Christmas in 2001, and I built the website on Microsoft Notepad. Everything was code back then, you either knew it or you didn't.

Fast forward 20 years and let’s just say, things have changed a bit. With that being said, there are a lot of things I’ve learned through the years about building charter and fishing guide websites. And while the industry has changed, A LOT, the goals are still the same. Making the web user ENGAGE with the website by calling, emailing, or forwarding the information on.

Historically, guides and charters booked sport shows to get their leads. It's time-consuming, expensive, and you're banking that people walking in are LOOKING for a guided fishing trip.

Same thing goes with advertising, you spend a lot of money and hope the right people see it. Why not go to the source of how they're looking nowadays?

Nowadays, the first thing most people do when looking for a fishing charter is picking up their phone and searching the web. This is old news, it's been that way awhile now but it's becoming more and more every year.

From there, you can rank on Google (which most use) 2 ways organically:

Rank in the 3-pack of Google Business Profile.
Have your website rank in the results.

While the above example showing Google Business Profile results is key to your business success, you can also capture one of the top spots in the web results from your website (or possible 2 listings).

It's VERY important to hit homeruns on the right keyword phrases. Otherwise, you're just shooting in the dark.

While so much emphasis in the fishing website industry is put on making some super-fancy site, the reality is the KISS principle still applies to web design. The 3 things I mentioned earlier (phone call, email, forwarding info to others) are the 3 MAIN goals of any guide & outfitter website.

If our clients aren’t getting phone calls and emails, we’re simply not doing our job. Our clients are busy, which is a good thing.

Take this example on the chart below of what happens when we took over and re-launched a fishing guide website recently. And keep in mind, this is getting into the OFF-SEASON too. Like I said, our clients are busy!

What Makes a Good Fishing Charter Website?

In my opinion, the definition of a “good fishing guide or charter website” is a combination of a few variables.

It has to be attractive, on ALL devices. While ⅔ of your traffic, or more, will usually come from mobile devices, that doesn’t mean you ignore any of your potential customers. We build sites that are visually appealing for all devices. After all, you only have a couple seconds to make that first impression.
It has to be FAST. SO MANY FISHING WEBSITES nowadays are LOADED with “stuff”. While it may look cool, on one device, it ends up killing your potential traffic. Google/Bing doesn’t want to serve slow websites high in their rankings. This has been noted publicly numerous times.
It has to be easy to navigate. A lot of our target markets are for individuals in the older demographic (a.k.a. Those that book the most trips). With that being said, we make contacting the guide EASY for everyone. No reason to make the client work for it.
It has to brand well. Your business is a brand. And that brand needs to be shown to your customers in a way that fits your business model. Colors, verbiage, and titles should be tailored to how you operate your business.

When you surf the web, looking at various fishing guide and charter websites, are these 4 things covered? I've found them to be lacking, more often than not.

And what's really scary, is how many web design shops claim to do these things, and don't? EVERYONE who designs websites claims to be an SEO specialist nowadays. Be very cautious of these so-called "experts". How did you find this article? It wasn't on accident. ;-)

We account for these 4 things every time we build a fishing guide website. And good fishing charter website design needs to be tracked, monthly, to ensure it’s meeting expectations. I love it when our clients call/email to tell us to “trim back” because they’re getting so many phone calls. It’s a good problem to have.

We’ve got a lot of testimonials of our work that help tell the tale of how we operate here at Flyway Media. And examples of our work can be found throughout our website.

We offer FREE estimates for our fishing guide web design packages. We feel we’re very competitive, and we operate with ZERO contracts. If you’re not happy, you can leave at any time. We’re confident that the results and customer service will keep you here for as long as you operate your business.

If you want to find out why Flyway Media is growing rapidly, feel free to reach out to me and I will help get your business the leads it needs to succeed.

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*Note for late 2022/early 2023: We're now giving many of our clients the options of the Outfitter Logic Platform as well. You can learn more about fishing guide marketing at Outfitter Logic itself.

The Outfitter Logic Platform is basically a fishing guide website on steroids (okay, so steroids aren't good but hopefully you get my pun). It features the following:

Starts with a FULLY-SEO'd website, designed to capture and generate bookings daily.
A full-featured CRM that captures your clients contact information when they finish a fishing trip.
Email marketing that makes sense towards both past clients and potential clients as well (that come through your website and captured into the CRM).
Automates All Fishing Guide Forms into a Simple Spreadsheet.
An optional booking calendar that makes it EASY for your potential anglers to book and setup dates themselves.
Simple Automations to the clients, including RSVP with instructions the day before the trip, and automatic follow-ups after the trip at a set time.
ALL THIS AND SO MUCH MORE!!!

Find out more at OutfitterLogic.com. This solution isn't for every charter or outfitter, but it provides the same results (just with more bells and whistles).