Name of your website?BudArpads
Your name?
Helen Hunt
Your Location (city, etc)
Budapest
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Rental Apartments for your holiday accommodation. Apartments specially chosen for their size and comfort. People can choose from a studio down town apartment to a luxurious three bedroom en-suite apartment. We have an on-line automatic booking system, or guests can email us or telephone us directly. Offices in UK and Hungary enable us to give excellent customer service.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Having to been Budapest and investing in two apartments of my own, I wrote my own website in 2003. We now rent up to 20 apartments and our website was re-written professionally in 2006.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Our first website was www.Bud-Arpads.com which was launched in 2003
How did you decide on a name for your website?
www.Bud-Arpads.com which was a play with words: Buda, Arpad and pads; Buda being one part of the city, across the River Danube from the Pest Side, Arpad being the warrior that first established Hungary with his 6 other warriors and Pad being the 60's hip word for apartment. We later dropped the hyphen and turned the name into BudArpads
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We believe we give our website that personal touch. Our name, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers are clearly defined. Our photographs are very clear, our descriptions are honest and are a true representation as to what we have to offer.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
our goal is to expand and to continue to offer top quality apartments in the City centre. Our main criteria is to give complete satisfaction and the best customer service we can offer.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
We struggled to be recognised by the major search engines and invested a lot of time and money during the first 3 years. 2007 has seen our business increase and at long last we are finding our website on the first 3 or 4 pages in the 4 top search engines.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We would employ a top quality webwriter to give our website that real WOW effect, purchase more apartments of excellence and employ more staff to look after them.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, we are a family business and it would be all hands on deck.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
A new boiler and we moved our Budapest office, which was a real headache.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting top listings on the major search engines
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Our webwriter working hard on our SEO and using google adwords
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We thought that it would be more popular. We would like people to stay looking at it for longer, as we have a lot of interesting information about Budapest which people tend to overlook.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We have been running this site since 2003 and would very much enjoy gains in popularity and traffic as this would help the growth of our business.
Would you recommend Budapest as a holiday destination?
Most definitely. Budapest is one of the most beautiful Cities in the World and I find it remarkable that people from the West, can today, walk freely in an Eastern European Country, which was once under Communist rule, especially a City as beautiful as Budapest.
What is your website address?
BudArpads
