Everyone knows you need a functional website, no matter the business or the locale. For hotels, most of us recognize that often a website may be a customer’s first introduction to your property. As such, it should entice, educate and make them want to stay with you.
Hence, for many GMs, one of the largest items on the 2017 marketing budget is likely the development of a new website, or at the very least a refurbishment of the current one to show newcomers that there’s something new to get excited about. This can come in the form of new interfaces or layout schemes, pages, offers, events, exciting visuals, plugins, iframes – whatever it takes to boost the user experience (UX) and keep customers engaged.
I say this taking into full account that for many of you, the website is something beyond your control, as dictated by the corporate overlords of your brand. For you, while you may control the actual content on the specific portion of the brand.com that’s relevant to your property, you likely don’t have control over such top-level features as the UX or theme.
In any case, whether you are an independent or semi-independent with your own vanity URL or part of a larger group with only limited control over your brand.com, there is still much to be conscious of before you greenlight any web-related project. For this, it’s wise to take a step back and view your website as only one part of a much larger picture. And to help you along, I’ve listed five ‘big picture’ questions that you should ask your marketing team before proceeding with any expenditure.
1. What is the single, underlying purpose of your website?
Or, to put another way, how does our current site fail to meet the current requirements for your brand identify or for how online consumer behavior has progressed? Does it lead with stunning visuals that both tell your hotel’s story and give a strong sense of place? How will it grow your business?
For instance, if your site is not built responsively – that is, automatically configuring to mobile – then by all means make haste and get a new one underway immediately. Mobile isn’t the future; mobile is now and it is everything. Bolting on a mobile-ready format is not easy to do, and you don’t want to create a ‘Frankenstein’ in the process. However, if the site works great on mobile (try it yourself to confirm and note any UX deficiencies), then and only then should you investigate further enhancements.
