Being a tourist information webmaster I’ve visited hundreds of hotel and guest house websites, seeing everything from professionally designed sites right through to Microsoft Word creations. Considering the levels of revenue achievable through their websites I wonder how many accommodation providers could improve their results by looking at their sites from the users perspective to help their hotel internet marketing perform better. I’ve come up with 11 steps that you can do to improve your conversion rates you get through your site.
- Good quality high resolution photos are my number one, not only will other tourist portal sites use them to showcase your property, but users will enjoy browsing through to see what you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to pay for a good photographer you’ll reap the rewards very quickly.
- Stick with a simple email address for booking enquiries like book@yourhotel.com or stay@yourhotel.com using an email address like enquiries@ or reservations@ is asking for trouble, the frequency with which these two terms are misspelt is very high.
- During the users enquiry process around 5% will enter their own email address wrongly so you won’t be able to respond by email. An easy solution to this problem is to ask for the users email address twice similar to a password validation. If you do manage to contact them by phone or fax ask them again for their email address so you can add them to your mailing list for future offers and events, you’ll be impressed at the levels of repeat visitors this can generate.
- Don’t try and rank for terms that are very generic to your city like “hotel accommodation in Swansea” your very unlikely to achieve it, better still look at your unique selling point as a hotel. Maybe you are located on the sea front, next to a museum or a sporting venue. Go with those terms instead and you’re far more likely to be successful.
- Make sure you’re listed in the Google Local Business directory, it offers an excellent way for you to be found when people use it to browse results. If you’re fortunate to be located in or in close proximity to a city centre your listing will appear at the top as a natural listing. This position is absolutely priceless! So with zero marketing spend you could be ranking for the keyword “hotels in {your city}”. Ive seen this feature work with 2 of my hotels and its incredible the amount of traffic that it drives to their websites.
- In your copy talk about the things that are in close proximity to the hotel but be wary of linking out to other sites at this stage, this is after all a site that you want to result in conversions so keep it simple with the end goal always to try and sell. Once you have your conversion why not generate an email to the user with a local guide attached or on a subsequent thank you page once you have a confirmed booking.
- Try and embed a Google map of where your property is located and a text box so users can enter their postcode and get directions. All this can be embedded in your website free with Google Maps
- Keep a call to action in plain site all the time like Book or an Enquire button on every page of your website.
- When your asking for the users details keep the enquiry form short, you don want to overwhelm the user at this stage, let’s keep pushing hard for the conversion.
- If you have a restaurant provide a menu, this saves them phoning you and asking you to send one. It also saves you postage costs.
- Find free tourism portals to list your site; you’d be amazed how many free high quality ones are out there.
- Have a late deals section where you can showcase offers that you might have and keep it updated. One of the most proactive hotels I have come across is Fairyhill in South Wales. They stay in tune with all the local tourism sites and always have their late deals updated. In a future article i’d like to talk about how you can maximise the return from your reception/front of house staff.
This isn’t a definitive list and i’d love to hear what experiences you have had with achieving those high conversion rates.
