In January, two former Microsoft executives launched Buuteeq, a Seattle-based company offering a subscription-based digital marketing system for independent hotels.

The cloud-based software-as-a-service approach provides a content management system, digital distribution, online reservations and business intelligence. Hotels upload photos, maps and other information, and Buuteeq populates the website, Facebook, mobile applications and more. Hotels can sign up for varying levels of services, from a free Facebook-only solution all the way up to the comprehensive package for $15,000 a year.

In June, Buuteeq got a capital infusion of $3.5 million from multiple investors and co-founder Forest Key says the new money will help expansion into Asia and Europe. Key says the company already has clients in more than 10 countries, with properties ranging from a three-room bed-and-breakfast to a 300-room property in Chile. He measures the company’s early success by its wide variety and diversity of customers.

Key recently offered some best practices and advice to managing a good website and digital marketing strategy.

You and the other founders of the company don’t have a background in the hotel industry, how did you come to this business?
My idea came from my perspective as a consumer. I was living in Beijing and working for Microsoft and traveling more than 50% of the time for work, and when I wasn’t traveling on business, I was traveling with my wife and children. I was traveling as much as I could in Asia.

I was frustrated as a consumer when I was trying to find these kinds of hotels. You’re often redirected from Google to aggregators and OTAs like the Expedias and TripAdvisors. Those all focus on price and availability rather than telling you about the hotel itself. As a consumer, I was looking for more detailed first party marketing collateral.

How did you arrive at the term “digital marketing system” and not something more focused on websites?
It redirects the conversation to best practices. The first thing I’d tell a hotel or any business is you really shouldn’t be thinking about a website anymore, but instead an online presence. Websites are increasingly being consumed by mobile devices, and now tablets. Those are rapidly taking over as the primary way of looking at content.

So what are the keys to a good website or digital marketing solution?
Rooms, photos and location. What we found statistically is people on the home page go first to the rooms tab or whatever it’s called 70% of the time. That’s what people want — to see your inventory. Beyond that it’s photos and localization for the intended audience, like maps and points of interest. Those are the table stakes. Localization can mean the website being available in different languages when appropriate.

What are the biggest mistakes you see hotels making?
SEO (search engine optimization) discovery: If you don’t do the basics of SEO, and have Flash (inhibits SEO), it’s an absolute disaster. You need clean code. The way you end up on a website is by way of SEO … We also tell hotels not to have music playing on their websites — people are looking from 9-5 during the day at the office. Music causes heads to turn.

Beyond that, where hotels get fumbled up is when they try to tell too much of a story. Anything that makes the property unique is important — spa, golf, restaurants, whatever — but you want to present it in a way that doesn’t drown out rooms, photos, location. When you land on a website, if it takes you more than 15 seconds to look at the room info, something is wrong.

Any best practices on photography?
Photos need to be as big as possible. Lots of websites designed three and four years ago and haven’t been updated — the bar has been raised on how rich things can be with broadband — with those little thumbnail photos are obsolete. That negatively reflects on your hotel. Lots of hotels we deal with don’t have professional photos, and that’s fine if they’re large.

Any other tips for a good digital marketing approach?
Don’t clutter it up. Keep it simple and well structured. Don’t assume the customer will spend 25 minutes there reading articles — they won’t. And don’t think the website is for a computer. Think of it as your core collateral people consume on screens, of all sizes and at all times.