As 2016 quickly approaches, we are encouraged to revisit marketing strategies and discover ways to increase overall revenue throughout the upcoming year, to create plans designed for long-term, sustainable growth. While driving more qualified traffic to your website is essential, refining your current presence to convert more travelers to guests is equally important. By doing so, you will effectively leverage your marketing channels and generate the highest return on investment.
The five tips listed below are just a starting point to help you improve your existing web presence. In order to successfully optimize, you must understand your audience and what motivates travelers to book. Then, use this information to hypothesize, test, analyze, and make data-driven decisions to better improve the user experience and increase online bookings. You will notice some of the tips require small changes while others require a bit more planning and budgeting. Often, major improvements happen when you implement minor enhancements to your digital presence.
- Enable Guests to Share the Love: We see about 3x more conversions on properties that have been shared or marked as a favorite. Since trip planning is highly emotional and often very social, provide your guests the tools they need to create favorites as well as share and plan trips collectively.
- Be Flexible: Create a search that always has an answer. Often, trips don’t need to fit into a perfect box, so allow guests to be flexible with their travel dates when searching for a property. Additionally, improve their experience by providing alternatives based on price, location, or amenities. If their original request is unavailable, be sure to differentiate results that are outside their actual selections.
- Embrace Mobile & Multiple Devices: Don’t lose your brand as you shrink screen sizes. Vacation planning occurs across a myriad of devices. That said, provide consistent, yet device optimized planning and booking.
- Create Compelling Calls to Action: Truly know and understand your audience. Be sure to empathize with your guest’s booking experience with calls to action that change as these travelers dive deeper into the booking process.
- Introduce Urgency Marketing: Honest and valuable urgency marketing is welcomed by your guest. Provide helpful insight, inform your guests exactly how many people are searching, and establish custom rules for when availability is tight.
With an optimized booking experience and website the traffic you drive through search, email, advertising, and social will convert at a much higher level, thereby exponentially increasing your overall revenue. Always remember that your website is living and breathing; it requires continuous refinement to make sure it is performing at its best.
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