Family Entertainment Centers - IAAPA

FEC
should be added online, too. This frees employees
from answering the basic stuff over the phones,
he says, leaving them to take on other, more
meaningful duties.
A good web site also will give people a reason to
keep coming back, Wyatt says. For example, she
says, consider posting coupons, a calendar of events,
birthday party giveaways, and any current specials.
However, she advises people to update the details
frequently; it can be embarrassing for an FEC operator
to still list a coupon that expired 10 months
earlier or a promotion from the summer of 2004.
“E-blasts are a great way to
constantly have your message hit
your target market.”
—Courtney Bourdas Henn, Fleming Entertainment Centers
Wyatt doesn’t just use her web site as an information
portal either. Thanks to an online booking
system, it also can be a solid moneymaker.
Customers buy the highest percentage of birthday
party goodie bags from the web, she says,
compared to over the phone or in person. Party
sales have increased as well, she says; Hinkle lists
Hinkle Family Fun Center uses its web site,
www.hinklefamilyfuncenter.com, for party
bookings, which has led to increased sales.
the more expensive packages at the top of the
page, and guests usually sign up for them without
scrolling any further.
Site Maintenance
Once a facility decides on all the graphics, information,
and features it wants to include on the
site, then comes the important decision of who
will design and maintain it.
Some, like Wyatt, opt to do it all in-house; she
believes a marketing person (or an assistant)
should be able to handle the responsibilities.
Wyatt currently uses the Microsoft
FrontPage program, which she finds
easy to work with but limiting in its
capabilities.
Wyatt plans to move on to Adobe
Dreamweaver for web development.
Westgate gives this software the
thumbs-up but acknowledges it comes
with a fairly steep learning curve, and
he doesn’t recommend the program to
operators with only moderate computer
skills.
For those without the proper training, he recommends
hiring a firm to create a content management
system. “The time you spend getting it
just right literally will be weeks or months,” he
says. “A professional will get it done in days.”
With this system, the company designs the site
and gives FEC operators the capability to make
any tweaks themselves.
Because of her many different responsibilities at
Fleming, Henn decided to outsource some of the
FEC’s web duties. She can make any minor changes
to pricing or times in mere seconds; for larger formatting
issues, Henn contacts her webmaster.
The price for a content management system
can start at just a few hundred dollars, Westgate
says. “In the grand scheme of things, a web site is
comparable to a Yellow Pages ad in terms of
cost,” he says, but, it will have a far greater reach.
“It’s so economical it’s crazy,” Henn adds.
For a little more money, the system can be set
up to allow managers to collect e-mail addresses
for an e-newsletter, Westgate says. This promotion
avoids paying for the postage and postcards
that come with traditional mass mailings. In
addition, people will have to opt in for the e-
newsletter.
“With mass mailings, they may be your customer,
they may not,” Henn says. “E-blasts are a
great way to constantly have your message hit
your target market.”
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