Hotel website design can be a daunting prospect when you know you need to make an impact on your would-be guests – research suggests you only have around three seconds to appeal to visitors and hook them in before they bounce off somewhere else.
Alongside the aesthetic aspect of your site, landing pages can be an important part of this because they provide the information travellers will need and that could persuade them to get their credit cards out make a reservation with you. But what if you think your landing pages aren’t really up to scratch? How can you improve them if you know they aren’t really performing particularly well and are failing to achieve the desired conversions? Here are a few of our top tips that might go some way to bettering that all-important content.Write your landing pages for your visitors This might sound painfully obvious, but you need to make sure that your landing page content is going to really appeal to the visitors your hotel website is getting.
It’s no good writing for millennials if your data shows you tend to attract middle-aged couples, for instance. Getting the right tone and message will require a little research on your part to draw up typical personas, but it’ll be well worth it in the long run, as you know who you’re trying to speak to each time you write something for publication or make amendments.Be as persuasive as possible Your landing pages need to make people feel as though they could really relax in comfort at your property, so persuade them that this is the case – make them long to be there and envious of the people who already are. Use text that emphasises your services and amenities – for example, don’t just say you have a private beach, but that you’ve got a sanctuary where people can soak up the sunsets hand-in-hand, away from the bustle of everyday life.The pictures should be aspirational too, featuring people enjoying your offerings a opposed to empty rooms and lobbies.
Content is king It’s important to have landing pages for as much of your site as you can, but remember that quality should always trump quantity. Every page you publish needs to contribute to your website’s goals, whether that’s encouraging newsletter sign-ups at one point or prompting bookings at another. Stay on-message, keep it simple and make your images and writing sparkle; don’t just bang something out because you feel part of your site is gappy. Beware technical issues Browsing on mobile devices overtook that on desktop machines for the first time last year, so it’s important that anything you create must be optimised for laptops and tablets as well as PCs. If you’ve done this, keep checking for other errors regularly too, such as pages failing to load or being slowed down.
You don’t have long to make people feel as though your hotel’s site is worth checking out, so make every second count and ensure all content displays as it should.Remember the call to action Many good landing pages ultimately fail because they don’t prompt visitors to do something at the end, so don’t fall into this trap. If you want would-be guests to provide their email addresses or to follow you on Facebook, ask them to at some point in your content. Make sure the call to action is displayed clearly in a visually appealing button that contrasts with your colour scheme and isn’t crowded out by other logos and buttons.
Use clear, urgent language too so that visitors are persuaded to respond.Landing pages can be tricky, but hopefully this has given you some guidance on how to write yours – and how to overhaul them if they’re not working.
