Your website is the storefront of your business and gives travelers an idea of what to expect in real life.
NB: This is an article from TravelNet
Your website design can make or break your business. A good website boosts your reputation while a bad one will scare away potential guests. Travelers come to your website to learn more about your property, amenities, and occupancy. So how long do visitors stay on your properties website? The average is roughly 15 seconds. This means that your website needs to engage your visitors nearly immediately to keep them engaged and on your site.
Before we go into why visitors might be leaving your website lets take a look at where to find your bounce rate in Google Analytics.
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How To Find Your Bounce Rate
Google Analytics account and open up the dashboard. On the left-hand toolbar, you will see an option that says “Audience Overview”. You will click this and be able to see a display of your overall web analytics. If you want to see specific page bounce rates you can check by going to the behaviors section of the dashboard.
A healthy bounce rate is between 41%-55%
Now that we know how to locate the bounce rate let’s discuss 5 reasons why visitors might be leaving your website.
Cluttered Homepage
Having a lot of information on your homepage can confuse visitors. You will want it to be clean and precise with enough open room to not distract your visitors. You will also want easy navigation. Your homepage should link to the main sections of your website. The navigation bar should be visible and links appropriately placed on the homepage content.
Slow Load Times
Travelers do not have time to wait for a slow website to finish loading, especially if they want to book right away. If your website takes long to load, they will exit the browser window and move on to the next site. The average speed is 4.7 seconds on desktop and 11.4 seconds on mobile. Google’s best practice is to have a speed index under 3 seconds. Where does your site fall?
No CTA
Where do your current CTA’s fall? Consumers have a quick attention span, so the most beneficial place to put a call to action is above the fold. If you have a long form, or have to have a CTA below the fold, you will want to use directional cues to lead your visitors to take action.
Irrelevant Content
Visitors get to your website by searching for relative keywords or searches. If they get to your website, and it is unrelated to what they are looking for they will leave. This is where Google Analytics comes into play. You will want to keep tabs on the keywords you are using in your content and what people are searching for.
First Impressions
What are you trying to tell your audience? Is your brand coming off how you want it to? Your website is the first impression of your property. Are you family friendly? Do you have special amenities or a special experience you want travelers to feel? You want to design your website to showcase this and give visitors the WOW factor.
Now that you know the main reasons why travelers are leaving your site, you can review your current web pages and analytics and see where you can improve.
