Lesson #10 Different Types of Tours
Written By Titmowse

A site tour can take many forms.

The basic concept of one is to give customers some free samples to look at while you ply them with your sales copy. The way you lead surfers through your presentation can be subtle or blatant. You can berate or stroke your customer. It all depends on the content and theme you are trying to portray.

You can let them click successively through page after page of all your site's perks and benefits or you can have a visitor take special sub-tours in different areas of your web. You could give them two or three free galleries with some story text to enhance the journey. Your site could feature some free tool or service that keeps them coming back to you until they finally pay for a membership.

Your design and copy and ability to put them together in an effective sales presentation will affect the future of your website. Consider your tour carefully. It's your visitor's first impression and you don't want it to be their last.

To give you direction on what type of tour you should build, we will list some types of tours and give you links to their examples:

Multi-Page

This type of tour begins with an entry page. The text and images are at their best and the free tour link is prominently displayed. When the surfer clicks on the tour link, they are taken to a second page that opens in the same window. This second page will contain descriptions of the paysites features and illustrative imagery. Usually the text is added onto the images in a tour but text can lie on the page separately.

Occasionally you'll find a paysite with a one-page tour but most offer at least three and some have has many as ten before the user clicks on the sign-up form. Each page features more text information about the site along with the appropriate illustrative images. Many tours use each page to present a different category of porn they offer.

For instance, the first page may tell of thousands of images and video streams while the second pages plays up the presence of live web chat with hot models and exclusive audio stories. The third will regale a site's numerous voyeur cams and special phone sex accounts. The fourth page could sum all the benefits up with your best pictures and sexiest text. They would then click the "continue" or "next" or "free tour" button on your fourth page, which would then open your fifth page: The sign-up form.

A good example of the Single Window/Multi-Page tour is from the Premier Hardcore paysite at: http://www.premierehardcore.com and Cozy Toons sites at: http://www.cozytoons.com.

Area Specific

An Area Specific tour presents itself as more of a portal. For instance, it may come in the form of an online magazine. Users could peruse the ezine freely but would have to pay a membership fee to access more hardcore articles and sections. This type of tour is more of a soft cell and has its fans. The trick to success with this tour format is dependent on your sales know-how. You have to give them enough to keep them coming and coming back. At the same time, you have to make them want more.

The Area Specific tour takes the surfer to different parts of your site with your minimal free features. This way, you are directing them to their own interests where they are more likely to buy. The live chat area of your online massage parlor directory may garner sales for one type of surfer. Your on-site adult toy store may garner another.

A fine representation of an Area Specific tour is FTVGirls, which is located at: http://www.ftvgirls.com and the online Stripper Search site located at: http://www.strippers.com.

Free-Appearing Tour

Somewhat like the Area Specific tour, Free-Appearing tours look like a fully operational website. The difference being they are definitely porn sites and not posing as an ezine or gaming page.

The difference between a Free-Appearing tour and a free adult site is the tour's limited free features. On a free site, most of the image and video clip links are real, working links with advertising banners applied on their pages. On a Free-Appearing tour as much as 90 percent of the links go to a membership sign-up form. A Free-Appearing tour could be a site that looks like an online gallery collection.

Perhaps one or two of the galleries actually work and they would probably be softcore galleries with explicitly suggestive text. It would probably link to a few other features like the ability to search for specific type models. The result would give the surfer one descriptive page with a portrait image and a text invitation to join the membership to see more.

The Free-Appearing tour could be served as a free adult site search engine or TGP. The majority of the links to adult web sites would lead instead to sign-up forms. There would be enough working links to entice the surfer but not so much as to satisfy their lust. The various sign up forms could have large ads on top of the form code, touting the exclusive benefits of membership.

The Free-Appearing tour has to give the reader interest enough to explore the site but must make its members-only features sound even better. A softcore collection of models with textual promises of more explicit nudity and acts inside is a very effective adult tour. A fine example of the Free-Appearing tour is SexSearch located at: http://www.sexsearch.com.

Reality/One-Page

This kind of tour is very popular right now. The whole thing is one-page long but it’s packed with text and images. Usually, this type of tour contains detailed descriptions of the content awaiting the paying member, told in a realistic fashion. The descriptions often tell of adventures awaiting the models pictured: “Sally doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to get GANGBANGED!”

A great example of a reality-based/one page tour is MILFRiders, located at: http://www.milfriders.com.