Hotel Website UX in nutshell
Summer is here!
Summer 2021 is here and time has come for hotels to once again reopen their doors after a whole year. Time is short and the global epidemic has not yet hit home. The competition for guests is intensifying. Marketing kicks off the season, with hotels happily boasting about having reopened and how safe it is to stay there. After the marketing, comes the booking, the user, or guest, and is taken to the landing page.
The booking itself should be the guest’s first experience
The website of the hotel is a highlighted communication channel about marketing and direct sales and it is of utmost importance that recent trends are followed. In this article I collected some of the most important points that were needed.
Mobile first
Nowadays guests consume the internet mostly on mobile devices: transferring money, sharing content and booking rooms. If your hotel website delivers the same experience in a mobile environment as it does on a desktop, it will make it easier for the user to make a decision. Design must be subordinated to usability if we don’t want to lose the user, i.e. lose guests. For this reason, it is even worth sacrificing secondary functions that cannot be displayed on the mobile version.
Who’s your guest?
Identifying the target group is one thing, but different segments of the target group not only have different needs, but also different behaviours. How quickly does a new mother find out where the baby changing room is on the site? Through measurement and analysis, the site can be optimised for a specific target group, significantly improving user-experience.
Show us who you are!
Each hotel is unique on a smaller to larger scale. Different themes, services and experiences await the hotel’s target guests. The USP (unique selling proposition) of the hotel is the backbone of the website communication. It is by highlighting these values that the unit stands out from the crowd, which is what seasonal packages are based on.
A user journey built around USPs enhances the guest’s experience on the website and makes them more likely to make a booking, i.e. generates conversion.
Power of visuals
One of the hotel’s great assets is the environment, the rooms, the atmosphere, which can be presented to guests in the form of large, high-quality images and videos. These visuals give you a sense of what the hotel has to offer and sell the service. However, it’s also worth paying attention to the quantity of images and videos, as websites rich in visual content load slower, especially on mobile devices, which can lead to user drop-out. Impatient users will simply abandon/close the website if it is slow.
Booking engine
The goal is conversion, booking, so the booking engine must work flawlessly.
A booking engine that is logical in its design and easy to use enables fast booking, which is the desire of every user. Slow, cumbersome operation is a similar burden on the user as huge unloaded images. The booking engine should be tested, optimised and retested if necessary.
Remember: always keep the booking CTA highlighted!
Find the weak points
Website analytics will show you where potential guests are leaving the site. By looking at these points, sometimes it’s just one bad feature, piece of content, or poor quality image that makes you lose a guest. Analysing your website will show you the weak points and improving them will increase bookings. Dare to call us for an audit.
Building trust is essential
The guest gathers information before booking. According to Everguest’s reputation team, they read guest reviews which influence their decision making.
The widgets on the various rating interfaces on the website reinforce trust in the user. Show how the hotel scores on different OTAs, METAs or even internal feedback systems.
Thanks.
Those were the main parameters of a decent hotel website. If you have no idea what your page’s performance is, contact us! We help to measure, analyze and improve your communication channels, therefore increasing your bookings and revenue.
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