Create a great website that converts lookers to bookers

Your hotel website gives potential travellers a chance to view the most important aspects of your property. Your website should be creating potential customers to paying guests.

People are not going to visit your property before they stay to ensure it meets all of their needs. Here are some things that every hotel website should have to make that happen.

Be mobile

In this day and age, you will find that a majority of your potential guests will be booking online, and on their mobile. Your website needs to be optimised for this to happen. Non-mobile friendly sites are now being penalised by search engines and ranking systems, which will make any competitors show above yours as a priority. If you aren’t mobile friendly, make that your #1 on your to do list!

Invest in good quality imagery and video content

For any website, content is key! And this includes imagery and videos. People want to experience your product before they actually experience it. What do the rooms and facilities look like? Where are you in proximity to events and city centres?

Try to have seasonal shots of your property and updates photos of the services and dining experiences you offer. Place these images in hero sliders at the top of the page to make an impact. When embedding videos on your website from YouTube, remember to remove the Suggested Videos option – you don’t want your hard earned user moving away from your site.

Simplify your homepage and navigation

Booking in the travel and hospitality industries can be a painful experience.  Making a site’s navigation feel as effortlessas possible is one way to make people follow through with the booking on your own site.  Engage your visitors with good content & design.  Don’t clutter your homepage – or any page for that matter. Provide only relevant information and in easily digestible bits. Remember you’re dealing with a fickle web audience and have only a few seconds to sell them your story and convert.

Invest in a good booking engine

Don’t make your customer jump through hoops when booking online. Ensure that you have an easy to use and secure booking engine. Then convert your web visitors into guests with a powerful booking engine. 

Remember to make sure your booking engine complies with the requirements of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI DSS).

Testimonials and other relevant content

Write content first for the user and then for the search engines. Use keywords wisely as well as internal links. Customer reviews should be a big part of your content, so should deals and special events. Have diverse call-to-actions; not everyone is coming to your website for booking.

Formatting your content so it is easy to read on any screen is also a must – use an easily readable font, sub headings and bullet points.