New Cancuncare Website Goes Live

It’s been a long time coming, but the old and tired looking cancuncare site has had a huge makeover at last.

It had got to the point that I was actually embarassed how it looked and was reluctant to add new material, partly due to hating the look and also because the navigation system was about as full as it could get.

I’m much happier with how the site looks now. Take a look:

Cancun Vacation Guide

Continue reading New Cancuncare Website Goes Live…

Blog Rush – New traffic generation tool for bloggers

You might notice the new widget on the sidebar from Blogrush, a new service for bloggers aimed at increasing traffic.

The way it works is the widget shows other peoples blogs from the same category which may be of interest to visitors. Each time the widget is displayed it earns the site a credit, and credits are then used to display this blog on other travel blogs who use the same service. They have  a referral system that runs ten levels deep. So, in theory it could bring a lot of extra traffic. I’m going to trial it a while and see how it does.

If you’re interested in adding the system to your blog then take a look at the video for more details.

Cancun Hotels Map | My new website

Cancun Hotels Map is a new website I launched today.

The site utilises the mapping tools provided by Google maps which offers aerial satellite photographs that you can then annotate with your own markers. You can then scroll the map around and zoom in or out to examine the hotels layout, check the beach or even do a virtual dive into the pool. I’ve added markers for all the popular Cancun hotels and nightclubs and I’ll also be filling each marker with links to more pics, information, availability and information for all the Cancun hotels featured.

There is one disappointing limitation and that is you are restricted to a hundred markers, I’d really have liked to add much more detail to show Cancun shopping centers, ferry terminals, even ATM machines. Hopefully, Google will increase this maximum soon.

Anyway, have fun with the site and spread the word

Cancun before and after videos

Dean has come and gone and to be honest it was nothing worse than the storms we get here every month or two. Sat there waiting for something to happen and it didnt, it hardly even rained. The new blog we ran though was an oustanding success – around 120,000 unique vistors in less than a week including 58,000+ on Tuesday. It also attracted widespread press interest and I ended up doing 3 interviews, one for the tv and two for the radio.

The videos below I took 12 hours either side of the hurricane and show that Cancun has not really been affected at all.

Continue reading Cancun before and after videos…

Isla Mujeres Booze Cruise Video

When we were back in England I bought a new camcorder, a JVC fancy thing with internal hard drive. It’s so much easier to use than our old one that ran with tape.
Jannet has developed quite a skill at making montages of video clips, and is in the process of producing several different ones for us to promote our cancuncare website with.

This is the first one Jannet’s made which features our Isla Mujeres booze cruise.

The cruise we do is a private hire of a catamaran and we sail over to Isla Mujeres. It’s open bar all day, lunch included and we normally do a golf cart convoy of the island, I think the most carts we ever had at once was 9. We’ve held about 15 of these cruises so far this year and averaged around 25 people each trip, so almost 400 people have come along.

New Cancuncare Redesign

It’s about two years since it really should have been done but the new redesign of the cancuncare website is well under way. I’m hoping to have it all finished in the next month or so.

The current site I cringe at every time I see it, it looks so amateurish and unprofessional that I hate to add new pages as I have to use the same crappy design. I suppose it was the first ever website I made though, it’s done well in the search engines and makes sales – so as far as it goes it’s been successful.

The new site is going to be something else though, I’ve already made a ton of new pages and with the system I’m going to use it will mean it’s very easy to add many more pages.

I’m going to be using a lot of video too, which I think will be a first for a Cancun site and is so much more 2007. Hopefully, the slicker more professional look, the crisper coding and the new content pages will be a lot more appealing to both surfers, and just as importantly the search engines.

I’d love to be able to say I designed and built it all by myself. However my design and coding skills, although improving, don’t go as far as what we will soon have at cancuncare. My good friend Kim (Rivergirl) at Magnolia Web Design is the one to thank for that. Kim came up with perfect code, right on the brief and made me some great easy to work with templates. Thanks Kim!

Now all I have to do is fill them with juicy content. You can see a screenshot of one of the new pages above left, but you’ll have to wait a little more yet before the new site launches.