Highly converting websites: A checklist for your hotel’s reopening

A professional, modern, mobile-first website is an absolute must-have for generating direct bookings. Your hotel’s website should not only reflect the uniqueness of your hotel but also appear within the first Google search results. We have compiled a checklist of the most important components of a highly converting website for you, in order to help you prepare for the reopening and upcoming booking boom in the best possible way.

The most important components of a highly converting website

1. Flexible CMS (Content Management System)

A CMS system enables user-friendliness since the website content can be updated at any time with ease, as opposed to a static HTML website. This allows you to update new offers and packages, availability and prices, as well as news and images easily at any time.

2. Professional Design

Your website visitor’s first impression of your hotel is shaped within a few seconds. By presenting relevant and compelling content in an enticing way you will increase the chance of converting your website visitor into a guest.

3. Usability

A simple customer journey is crucial to generate direct bookings directly via your hotel’s website and helps to reduce booking abandonment. Simple navigation of well-curated content at the right touch-points along the customer journey makes it easier for them to anticipate and imagine a stay in your property.

4. Mobile Usability

We are seeing more searches and bookings using mobile devices for hotel stays. Therefore, offering a user-friendly and positive user experience on mobile devices and tablets is imperative. Also, if your hotel’s website is not fully optimised your Google website ranking will suffer allowing competitors to take your market share.

5. Rich visual content

A picture is worth a thousand words. High-resolution images and videos are crucial to underline your storytelling and branding and set the right mood and tone for your website visitors.

6. A high-performing Booking Engine

A powerful solution to turn your hotel website into a highly converting direct booking channel. It allows potential guests to see all essential information about their booking in a convenient format. If the guest finds key booking information missing, it is very likely they will leave the website without finalising the booking.

7. Relevant Add-Ons

Whether notifications about the COVID security measures your hotel has put in place or the stay voucher cancellation tool that allows guests to book a stay at a later date – we ensure the important guest information is front of mind and where your guests can access it quickly.

8. Marketing Automation

A consolidated live guest database enables the automation of personalised and inspiring guest communication and automatic management of requests for stay quotations to boost conversions.  A GDPR-compliant database with marketing permissions also offers a variety of options to encourage guests to return for a visit to your property and to nurture and build long-term relationships with your guests.

9. SEO

Search Engine Optimisation should go hand in hand with your hotel’s website. Without effective SEO, potential guests won’t be able to find you on Google and you might risk losing them to your competition with a stronger position in the search engine rankings.

10. Metasearch

Metasearch ads via Google Hotel Ads, TripAdvisor or Trivago are shown to users who search for a hotel or the business card of your hotel on the map of a metasearch engine. These are only displayed if there is availability in your hotel. In this way, we ensure that we do not spend a campaign budget if a booking is not possible.

Advertising via hotel metasearch engines offers you a great opportunity to reach more bookers, as many potential guests turn to these online portals before making a booking in order to compare reviews, prices and offers.

11. Google Ads

Google Ads search, banner advertising, and remarketing are other tools that can help you improve your online visibility. The biggest advantage of Google Ads is that your ads appear above organic search results. They direct your ads to specific audiences, i.e. to users who are searching for keywords related to your hotel.

12. Analytics

You can’t improve what you don’t measure – this also applies to every website’s performance. The traffic of your website visitors as well as relevant content and SEO keywords should be checked regularly and optimised if necessary.

This blog post was originally written and posted by Profitroom.