The hospitality industry is a dense and competitive market where your hotel will have to stand up to some pretty stiff competition.
NB: This is an article from Travelboom
In today’s digital world, it has become essential to not only embrace online tools, but utilize them to their full potential. As the digital face of your brand, your hotel website can act as an ally or foe, making or breaking your bottom line. Ensuring that your website is taking advantage of essential elements is one step to help your hotel maximize its online presence.
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Here is a list of the 16 must-have hotel website features we think your hotel needs:
Security
As one of your top revenue-drivers, security for your hotel website should be at the top of your list. Keep hackers and cyber thieves at bay with a secure environment from start to finish. A few key things you can do to ensure your hotel website won’t be exploited for vulnerabilities include purchasing an SSL, updating your software regularly, choosing a reliable hosting company and pulling frequent backups.
Additionally, you can load your site behind a content delivery network, or CDN, for an added layer of protections against bots, choose secure passwords and try to limit third party scripts and add-ons when possible.
ADA Compliance
ADA compliance, short for the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design means that all electronic information and technology must be accessible to those with disabilities. Establishing an accessible website for all is important not only for inclusivity, but for preventing costly litigation.
In an effort to make your website more accessible, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) suggest making the following improvements to your website:
- Add descriptions, or transcripts for pre-recorded video and audio content
- Add descriptive ALT text to images so that they can be read by screen readers
- Ensure enough contrast between text and its background color
- Ensure that link anchor text is intuitive
- Add meaningful page titles that accurately portray the content.
- And more
Responsive Design
When you consider the number of device types, device sizes and device brands, designing a hotel website that performs universally is crucial to success. We’ve seen consistent growth in mobile traffic and revenue. A responsive hotel website allows guests to easily browse content from desktop to tablet and beyond.
Clear & Concise Calls to Action
Driving traffic to your hotel website might be a challenge, but converting visitors into guests can sometimes feel impossible. Whether your goal is to earn a booking or generate a lead, make sure your calls to action are clear to the user.
- Use large buttons that stand out and can be easily clicked on mobile.
- Use contrasting colors so that CTAs are easily noticeable.
- Reduce the number of required form fields to simplify submission for a user.
- Use strong command verbs and invoke a sense of urgency where necessary.
- Test your CTAs on all device types.
Contact Information
Adding contact information to your hotel website provides your potential guests with an easy way to connect with you. A hotel stay can be a large expense and visitors often have questions prior to booking their stay. Including a real phone number, email address and contact form can help to eliminate some friction during the decision making process.
Contact information should be especially accessible for mobile users. Ensure that telephone numbers are click-to-call, addresses open in maps and email addresses open a new message.
