WHAT COMPONENTS TO DESIGN & ADD TO YOUR BOUTIQUE HOTELS WEBSITE TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS & BOOKINGS
As technology permeates our society and is more widely adopted, the interaction between a brand and consumer is increasingly important. Hotels today need to seamlessly translate the experience they are cultivating on property to build trust, excitement and value to their guests from across the world. An essential part of any hotel or resort marketing strategy should be developing an intuitive user experience to their branded hotel website. The more quickly a brand is able to build and instill trust with prospective guests, the easier it is to enhance value and justify higher rates for that online customer experience.
Whether we are seeking to provide a facelift and increase the conversion ratio of direct bookings for our clients or are building a completely new website, we have created a comprehensive list of website functionality and elements that can be integrated to further enhance the online experience guests get when interacting with and booking their boutique hotel.
While not all of these considerations are necessary to have an optimal website that consistently converts prospects into guests, the more intentional you are in your pre-production and design, the better the outcome and results your brand will receive. Recognizing the nuances and intricacies of your hotel, expectations of your guests, relation and perceived value against your competitors and overall trends in consumer behavior will provide the foundation for which of these elements are in each of the ‘NEED’, ‘WANT’ and ‘NICE TO HAVE’ buckets. We encourage our clients to prioritize what is mission-critical for them, what would be nice to have and what they want to incorporate into the site to effectively strategize where the best use of resources and time are in designing and building out their website. While you may really want to have the price for your hotel rooms adjust to your visitor’s respective currency, understanding your audience and how important or influential this is to them is a cost-benefit analysis that is justified for summer resorts with sufficient room rates and inventory, while for others it might not pay dividends based off the number of rooms they have and ADR. Working with our team can help provide clarity and justification around which of these components add value and provide an ROI in more effectively converting prospects to guests.
If you are exploring enhancing your existing website with call-to-actions, subliminal pages or functionality in a facelift without a complete redesign, prioritizing these initiatives is equally as important. It’s unnecessary to completely re-design and develop your website when minimal adjustments can and then enhance the user experience and achieve the same effect. Intentional changes to call-to-actions does user experience in previewing and booking rooms, exploring the hotel and destinations and other pertinent information can equally enable hotel years to increase room rates and justify a higher perceived value and reputation. For further considerations on best practices to enhance your direct bookings, visit our SMARTicle on increasing your website’s conversion of guests here.
If you are looking to expand your website in any of these ways you can contact us and we can discuss how our team can help you with our website design.
View & Download the Full Hospitality Website Functionality Checklist here as a critical part of your hotel marketing plan.
