NB: This is an article from Tambourine
We live in a world of instant gratification and non-stop distractions. So, all hotel marketers can surely agree that holding a guest’s attention in the digital world is difficult. We’re up against our guests’ own smart phones, websites full of intriguing content and forever-streaming social media channels.
In fact, attention spans are at an all-time low. Recent studies have shown that because of all these tech distractions, humans now actually have shorter attention spans than goldfish! Bottom line for those of us trying to convert guests on our hotel websites? Every second counts.
There are still ways to capture attention quickly and hold it. The first five seconds on your site will determine if that person books or bounces, so you need to squeeze performance from every second. Here are the five things every hotel website must do in the first five seconds to grab and hold attention long enough to maximize your chances of conversion and revenue.
#1: Load Quickly
You’ve probably experienced this yourself. If a hotel website doesn’t pull up in the same amount of time it takes to slowly blink your eyes, you think something is not only wrong with the site, but the hotel itself! The ramifications of a slow loading website are not just swift (people will abandon your hotel website if it doesn’t load within 4 seconds), but often permanent as well. Recent studies show that once a potential guest leaves your site because of slow loading, most will likely never come back. That’s a ton of potential bookings down the drain merely because it took up too many seconds to load.
One quick way to gauge and improve load times (especially for mobile) is to use Google own speed checker.
#2: Clearly State your Unique Value Proposition
The reason you’re different from your comp set has to be obvious. Remember, you have just five seconds, so there is no time to waste in expecting the guest to figure it out on their own. Don’t hide what makes you special a few sentences down in your content or buried deep in other parts of your website. You need to offer relevance to the guest immediately.
Read rest of the article at Tambourine
