“True hospitality consists of giving the best of yourself to your guests.” This famous quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, the former United States first lady, speaks to the heart of hospitality. It is as true in today’s digital age as it was decades ago.
Hosts and hoteliers are responsible for ensuring their guests receive the best experience when they visit the property. Whether that’s by providing a clean and comfortable room to stay in or offering them helpful advice on what to do in the local area.
Moreover, managing hotels is about more than just being hospitable. It also entails ensuring that your guests feel welcome and well-cared. It is essential to provide guests with convenience, security, and comfort.
Redesigning and renovating your hotels is an excellent way to improve the overall stay of your visitors. Moreover, revamping your hotel website design compliments it. As the smart hospitality sector continues to ascend at a (CAGR)compound annual growth rate of 22.6%, reaching $58.1 billion in 2027, optimization of hotel websites has become vital.
But maybe you’re asking, what are the best practices to develop my hotel website and increase bookings? Perhaps you are contemplating that you would like to organize your website but are not great at coding and design. Don’t fret; here are seven tips to help you revamp your hotel website design without any coding required.
Tip #1. Customize for Mobile Users
With over 6.92 billion smartphone owners worldwide (86.4% of the global population), customizing your website design to be mobile-friendly is an advantage. If you are not sure how to make your hotel website mobile-friendly, here are some quick ideas:
Images and videos
Resize, compress, and crop video and image files on your web pages. This reduces the size of your website and makes it load faster. You could utilize an image or video compressor to accomplish this.
Navigation
Check that your hotel website search bar, action buttons, and links are easy to click on a smartphone device. Users generally click with their thumbs, so ensure they are large enough to click on.
Text
Make sure the text is legible and easy to read on a smaller screen. Use a mobile-friendly font such as Arial or Helvetica.
Page Content
Keep the length of page content short and to the point. The shorter your page content, the faster it will load on a mobile device. You can also use bullet points and short sentences but always remember to include high-ranking keywords and phrases.
Tip #2. Improve User Experience(UX)
User experience, UX, is a user’s overall feelings, emotions, and perceptions when interacting with a hotel website. This refers to the rate of service, relevancy, comfort, and security a website provides. You can improve your user experience by speeding up your website, enhancing security, and focusing your content on your specific niche.
Tip #3. Improve User Interface(UI)
On the other hand, UI or user interface refers to the interactive elements of a hotel website design. This may include visuals such as color schemes, fonts, logos, design elements, button colors, button placement, etc. To better the UI, you can identify specific aspects of the web page, such as a misplaced CTA button, a sketchy web form, or distracting or confusing items.
Tip #4. Curate Valuable Content
Creating valuable content is an excellent way for users to enjoy and maximize their stay on your website. It is also a great source of information for users to refer back to when they need guidance. The content you create can be in the form of entertainment, educational or musical.
If you want to create more engaging content, you can use a music video maker to make a behind the scene video on your hotel. You may also include travel guides, restaurant recommendations, and local destinations. By providing valuable content, you are helping your users and improving your brand awareness and reputation.
Tip #5. Leverage Animation
Video is a prominent media in today’s internet traffic, with over 3.48 billion videos being watched daily by users. Whether it be a product demo video, a how-to video, or an explainer video, animation on your hotel website can be an excellent way to catch and hook users’ attention.
For some hoteliers with little experience in creating videos, you can find a free video editor online. However, if you’re feeling a little adventurous, most smartphones now have a built-in editor where you can practice.
Tip #6. Keep SEO in Mind
In the world of websites and online marketing, SEO is a popular term and practice. Why? Because SEO or search engine optimization is an effective strategy to boost your hotel website. Some of its benefits include the following;
- Higher ranking in search engine(Google, Microsoft, etc.) results page.
- Increase in monthly organic traffic, hence more leads, conversion and sales
- Builds authority and reputation, which drives more collaboration and partnership
There are many ways to optimize your hotel website’s design for search engine indexing. But some of the most efficient include organizing the following;
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a catalog of all the pages on your site. It helps search engines crawl and index your website faster and easier. It’s also a helpful tool for users who want to find specific information quickly. To create an XML sitemap, you must use a free tool like Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster Tools.
Alt Tags
Search engines do not easily read images, so you need to use alt tags(preferably with high-ranking keywords). Alt tags are short descriptions of your photos that tell search engines what the image is about when they find it on your website. They also help users who have disabilities or have a slow internet connection to understand what the image is about.
Transcript and Captions
Similar to images, search engines cannot readily understand videos. It would help if you used transcripts or captions to help them crawl your video easier. A transcript is a written version of the video file, while a caption is a text displayed within the video in sync with the video’s dialogue.
URL Structure
Search engine prefers short URLs because they are easier to crawl. The URL of your homepage must contain relevant keywords to help search engines understand what your site is about.
Social Buttons
Social buttons are clickable elements on your page that enable users to easily share your content or follow your social media accounts. Properly configuring your social media button is a good SEO practice and helps you gain more traffic.
Tip #7. Always Monitor Trends
Keeping up with the trend is also beneficial to your hotel website as it enables you to stay ahead of your competitor. You can monitor smart hospitality industry news and follow popular social media accounts. Some of the trends that you should keep an eye out for include the following;
The Metaverse
Developed by the same team that created Facebook, the Metaverse is an online virtual reality that connects users and enables them to interact. It is the fusion of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, where users can customize their avatars and explore various virtual worlds created by other users.
This technology is starting to become more popular, including in the hospitality industry, as more businesses are using it to provide users with an immersive experience.
Internet of Things
IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to a network of devices connected to the internet. It provides users with information about their environment and lets them control various devices in real-time. This technology is being used by many businesses, including smart hotels, to improve their services and provide a more personalized experience.
Takeaways
As a hotelier and a hotel website owner revamping your website design is a significant matter. Your hotel’s website is the first introduction to your business. It substantially impacts how people view your hotel, and it can be a deciding factor in the number of your bookings.
By updating a few key things about your website design, you can increase visits, engagement, and conversions. Learning the above best practices and tips on optimizing your website design can help you improve its performance. Furthermore, you should monitor trending technologies and innovations that can help boost your online presence and stay ahead of the competition.