Tips For Increasing The Conversion Rate Of Your Hotel Website
In the fierce, competitive world of hospitality, having an online presence will significantly boost customer attraction and conversion. Your website will act as the digital face of your hotel. People will determine the quality of your hotel and hospitality services based on your website. They will also compare it against other hotels in your region. This factor creates a need for an enticing digital presence in your hotel. You can satisfy this need by creating a website and launching it. But is that it? Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. To stand out among your competitors, you need to enhance and optimize your website periodically. Here in this article, we have shared a significant number of tips that can help your website dominate the online space and boost your conversion rate.
1. Use Responsive Design
Responsive web design refers to an approach where you create webpages and interfaces that can adapt to the size of the user’s screen, device, and preference. The world is using innumerable devices, each one different from the other. Your web pages need to acclimatize to the user’s device as this increases customer satisfaction and usability. The goal is to ensure that the website remains flexible and functional, regardless of the device, and make your website work seamlessly on any phone, tablet, laptop, and computer.
If getting started with responsive design seems perplexing for your business, try contacting a hotel marketing agency that can help you out with responsive design and other processes.
2. Build A User-Friendly Interface
Whenever a user visits your website, he will assume that your website has basic facilities like any other website. These facilities include having a head symbol for the user profile, a hamburger button for the menu, a phone symbol to contact your hotel instantly, and many more. When a user visits your website, he wants his work done seamlessly. If you wish to convert him into a customer, you must help him with his tasks and create a positive experience. Create an intuitive layout and ensure that every task is performable with a minimum number of clicks and no time is wasted in doing so. These tasks include checking room availability, upgrade options, and amenities.
3. Implement High-Quality Images And Videos
When a user visits your website, images of your hotel, the rooms, and the facilities are the first few things they will look for. You can impress the visitor and instantly convert him by uploading high-quality images of your hotel and people enjoying their stay. However, a problem associated with using high-quality images is that they increase loading time and do not align with responsive design. This problem must be tackled before the website is launched. Try using images of different qualities for different versions of your website. If the load time increases because of the images, try reducing it by working on other aspects of your website.
Invest in high-resolution images to portray your hotel’s ambiance via visual appeal. If you are struggling with the management of media quality and response time, a hotel marketing agency can provide the solutions to your problem. Consider involving them in your website optimization process.
4. Make Use Of Compelling Call-To-Action
A call-to-action is a few lines of text, a link, or a button that encourages the visitor to immediately take an action like booking a room or exploring booking details. Your CTAs must be prominent, convincing, and strategically placed throughout the website. The reason why CTAs are so effective is that they prevent procrastination on the user’s end. A visitor might find your services interesting and then leave without booking; to prevent this and other similar incidents, you must use CTAs. They should not be present everywhere as it creates a suspicious appearance. Place the call to action where the user is more likely to be convinced. The location of CTAs could be at the bottom of an article or other content, on the menu bar, or at the bottom of every new webpage.
5. Display Customer Reviews And Testimonials
You must ask your website developer to add a section that will display the feedback and reviews left by past customers. Doing this creates a sense of trust and reliability for visitors. You can also encourage existing customers to share their experiences using images and videos to create an appealing testimonial for potential clients. You can test this with yourself: a picture of a happy family/couple standing in front of your hotel or a long paragraph about your services. What do you find more convincing? It’s the images. They create a mental imagery of what your stay would look like at that hotel. Try including pictures of families, couples, a group of friends, and small children enjoying your facilities. You can also display the special mentions and recognitions received by your hotel since its establishment.
6. Use Colour Schemes Strategically
Color schemes play a pivotal role in enhancing the overall appearance of your website. Choose a colour scheme that portrays your business’s identity. A good combination of colors can make your website appear warm and welcoming, while some color schemes can also keep visitors away from your website. Try out various color schemes and determine the one that has a positive effect on the user. Colors do not directly influence user experience, but they psychologically impact the user’s eyes and mind. Try to use color schemes that are welcoming and common to keep the layout intuitive and not confuse the user.
7. Keep The Booking Process Hassle-Free
When does a visitor turn into a client? When they book a room or more at your hotel. Your goal is to get bookings out of as many visitors as possible. Therefore, you must make the most crucial action as simple and quick as possible. The user should be able to book the desired number of rooms seamlessly.
As discussed before, you must use CTAs to increase your conversion rate. One of your CTAs could be about booking a room instantly. You can customize the CTA and try to obtain all the important details in minimum steps.
Similar to the booking process, you can make the physical check-in and check-out processes hassle-free to ensure a positive staying experience which can boost your customer retention and word-of-mouth recommendations.
8. Celebrate Special Offers And Seasonal Discounts
During vacation months when people generally plan their vacations, you can introduce offers and discounts on your website to attract more visitors. Combine these offers with CTAs and visually appealing elements to boost your conversion rate. People love to save money during vacations, emphasize the saving opportunities that your hotel is creating for the users, and then advertise it.
To take this further, use customization to welcome people with greetings for the occasion and pitch your offers. This way, the visitors have a positive emotional experience on your website and will prefer you over your competitors. Sometimes, these effects leave a long-lasting impression and the user will remember your hotel for their upcoming vacations.
9. Implement Interactive Chatbot And Live Virtual Assistant
Bookings can be complicated as they require a lot of details and involve formalities. To guide your visitors through such complex procedures, you can use chatbots that will act as virtual assistants. This simplifies the booking process for them and boosts your conversion rate. Various hospitality marketing agencies provide services to set up virtual assistants and chatbots, customized to your website. Look out for the best options that comply with your budget.
Another use of chatbots is to greet visitors when they land on your website. The chatbot can be programmed to ask simple questions like the number of people, duration of stay, and other preferences. This can give you an insight into what people expect from you. You can also ask for simple details like their budget and purpose of stay, and then target them with customized advertisements and offers. This process will be further discussed in the next section.
10. Incorporate Automated Marketing Integration
Automated marketing is the process of using technology to perform tasks, obtain data, and then analyse it. By observing inputs from the user, you learn about their needs and expectations. You can also store the details (email addresses and phone numbers) of interested visitors and target them with customized adverts and discounts during peak months. All these automated processes will boost your conversion and retention rate.
As discussed above, you can combine the chatbots and automation software to store and analyse the communications between the visitors and your bot. By implementing some machine learning algorithms, your bot can improve its responses with every communication. This strategy will have some precious long-term benefits for your business.
11. Introduce A Virtual Tour Of Your Hotel
Take a stride into the advanced technology and introduce virtual tours for your visitors. Allow the people to explore your hotel, facilities, and individual rooms. This technology is relatively new, using this will take you a step ahead of your competitors. You can also ask for the user’s feedback after a virtual tour. Place a call-to-action after the tour to contrive instant conversion of the user.
Setting up a virtual tour can be difficult as it is a new concept. In areas like this, you can always look for a hotel marketing agency that can help you with the technicalities of a virtual tour.
12. Add Blog And FAQ Section
Apart from the reviews and testimonials section, build separate sections for blogs and frequently asked questions. In the initial phases, you can create your questions and answer them to provide the details to your readers. Ask the user for their queries if they haven’t been answered already and respond to them personally. By doing this, your business appears genuine and user-friendly. In the blog section, you can add blogs about your hotel like getting the best out of all the facilities available, places to visit near your hotel, and many more. This makes your website informative and increases the number of visitors. Adding a call to action and compelling content to this section will increase your website’s conversion rate.
13. Provide Informative And Easy-To-Use Maps
Another exciting and rare feature you can add to your website is a customized map. This map will be of the city your hotel is based in. You can spot a list of famous tourist attractions on the map. Include places like monuments, natural landscapes, restaurants, clubs, high streets, cafeterias, and other attractions. Just like the blog and FAQ section, this section will attract visitors who are looking for genuine information. By significantly increasing the number of visitors, your conversion rate will gradually increase. If you are wondering how to create custom maps for your hotel, contact a hospitality marketing agency that provides relevant services.
14. Loading Speed And Content Optimization
In continuation with the tips on responsive design, we recommend you carefully consider your website’s loading speed. This can be the differentiating factor between a visitor and a customer. A high loading speed will repel the visitors and hurt your conversion rate. You cannot sacrifice the quality of your content for loading speed and vice versa, a balance must be maintained between the two quantities. As for your content, optimize your choice of keywords to improve your ranking on the browser. By implementing Search Engine Optimisation, you can appear at the top of the results page when the user searches for hotels like yours.
15. Easy Access to Customer Care
Your website must provide options to contact various departments within your hotel. This will help the user clarify their queries before and during their stay. You can provide the contact details and landline extensions of the reception, booking office, kitchen, and other facility charges. This ensures customer satisfaction and a positive user experience.
16. Featured Advertisements
Featured advertisements are where you lend your online space to brands and businesses around your hotel. For example, there’s a new fine-dine restaurant in the vicinity of your restaurant. You can approach them and if interested, they will pay you to feature their advertisements on your website. Featured advertisements are so popular that various hospitality marketing agencies provide services to set them up for you. Featuring advertisements will not only increase your revenue but also provide the users with valuable information that will help them with their vacation planning.
17. Information Section
Another section that must be present on your website is the information section. People can find all the relevant information about their vacation here. The information available in this section will help your customers plan their outings. You can also provide virtual assistants that will guide the customers to plan their vacations based on their duration and preferences. Here’s a list of some details that can help your clients enjoy their vacation.
- List of local restaurants, bars, clubs, high streets, and shopping centers.
- Places to visit like museums, natural landscapes, cinemas, and more.
- Itineraries of various activities near your hotel.
- Information about the local cuisines, culture, festivals, and occasions.
18. Highlight Your Security Features
What do you look for in a hotel when planning for your vacation? The facilities, reviews, and other features. Yes, they are important. But some features that are not given enough attention are the security and precautionary measures taken by the hotel. Hotels can be a favorite target for burglary. By talking about your security facilities, you give out a sense of security to your potential clients.
Security features also include online security. When booking rooms online, the customers will share confidential details like their account number, payment pin, and contact details. Try to mention some details of how the transactions are safe and secure on your website.
19. A/B Testing
A/B testing is a user-experience research procedure. It involves the testing of two or more versions of content to see which one is more promising and appeals more to the viewers. You can conduct A/B testing for the CTAs, images, maps, general layout, and other elements of your website. The data and insights obtained from A/B testing will help you and your team make informed decisions to enhance your website.
You can consult a hotel marketing agency to conduct A/B testing and update your website regularly based on the feedback received.
20. Continuously Monitor And Analyze User Behavior And Other Data
Regularly monitor your website analytics to identify patterns in the user’s behaviour. Doing this will help you identify the performing and non-performing elements of your website. You can also identify the pain points of your website and then update them. Understanding user behavior will also enable you to make strategic use of color schemes and CTAs as well as determine their effectiveness. Remember this: if people don’t like your website, they will not use it and your conversion rate will fall steadily.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, there are innumerable ways to boost your conversion rate. But the main aim behind most of these tips is winning the user. If the visitor likes your website, he will become a customer. Try to impress, inform, and convince your users while staying genuine and trustworthy. If you get stuck at any step, remember to check out various hospitality marketing agencies out there.
By incorporating these tips into your hotel website optimization strategy, you can create a dominating online presence that not only attracts but converts potential clients, ultimately driving the success of your hospitality business. Stay ahead of the competition and create a digital space that reflects the excellence of your hospitality.