How to Create an Effective Hotel Website Design

You need a mobile-friendly, responsive hotel website to attract today’s travelers

Is your hotel website design desperately in need of an upgrade? When you first launched your hotel website, you made sure it featured an eye-catching design, useful features, and state of the art technology to ensure it attracted travelers.  Internet standards rapidly evolve, however, and an outdated site that doesn’t conform to current search standards may be costing you bookings at an exponential rate. Google’s 2014 Travel Study found that 57% of leisure travelers and 64% of business travelers began their travel planning using online searches; if your hotel website performs poorly in searches, a majority of the travelers to your area may not even be aware that lodging with you is an option! Since the number of travelers using mobile devices to perform their online searches is continually increasing, the best guidelines on how to create an effective hotel website design now call for hoteliers to use search –friendly hotel website designs that are mobile-optimized so they perform well in both mobile and desktop searches. There are several things you can do to ensure your hotel website design is effective at engaging today’s tech-savvy travelers:

Use SEO optimized content
Make sure all of the content on your website follows the best SEO-ready (search engine optimization) practices – with all of the crucial elements of your hotel website working to raise your search rank, you can ensure that you will gain the best SERP position possible. Make certain you:

• Use search optimized website copy, with 3-4 keywords per page
• Include long-tail keywords
• Include keyword phrases that sound like verbal questions to raise your site’s mobile search performance
• Optimize your images and videos

Choose a responsive hotel website design
Today’s travelers demand the on the go convenience of hotel websites that they can access from anywhere at any time, whether they are in an airport, at work, or browsing on their tablet at home. The importance of mobile travel websites cannot be overlooked; Google’s 2014 Travel Study found that 83% of travelers have an encountered website that was not mobile-friendly and only 23% of those travelers actually pushed through. Can you afford to lose all those customers? Responsive hotel website designs ensure that travelers have a flawless experience on every device by offering several key benefits:

• Automatically adjustment all of their key elements, including fonts and images, so they are easy to view regardless of screen size
• No side-to-side scrolling
• All elements are accessible by touch, with easy-to-use navigation buttons that work well with thumbs
• Feature device-agnostic design; your new responsive hotel website will not need to be updated anytime soon as it will accommodate new screened devices as they are developed

Include a mobile hotel booking engine
Don’t lose business because travelers can’t book their stay at your hotel through their mobile device; you can maximize your hotel website’s effectiveness by including a mobile hotel booking engine that accepts and confirms reservations through smartphones and tablets. Some key features you should include:

• Easy booking features
• Link to map so guest can get hotel directions without leaving your site
• Pop-up special offers
• Automatic confirmation of reservations through follow-up text or email

Let Travel Tech Strategies help you increase your hotel booking rate with a highly effective hotel website design that is responsive, mobile-friendly, and designed to help you attract guests. Once your new hotel website is up and running, we can help raise its search performance with a full range of online hotel marketing strategies, including SEO content creation services, hotel blogging tips, and more.

Contact us at Travel Tech Strategies today at 954-779-2801 for an effective hotel website design destined to help increase your hotel bookings!