Why does your hotel have a website? There are a number of reasons of course – brand awareness, online reputation, you had some really great photos taken a while back – but ultimately, it’s to get people to book at your hotel.
Unfortunately, there are a number of pitfalls that even the most seasoned UX designer can fall victim to when creating online booking functionality for a hotel website, resulting in your website not being as effective as it should be at generating new bookings.
From your users forgetting about you to not trusting your payment process, there are a myriad of ways to fall short of user expectations and, thankfully, many ways to make sure you don’t.
Pitfall #1: Potential guests forget about you
In a world where web browsing is often done in spare micro-moments on multiple devices, the online buyer’s journey is fragmented. Your potential guests look at one site, then another, browse on their phones at home, then their desktops at work, and, between all this, there is a good chance that even if they saw and liked your website, and even if they started booking, they will forget about you.
Solution
In cases where users may have visited your site, or even started booking, and were then distracted, ran out of time or switched device, remarketing ads can remind them where they were and what they were looking at.
Many social media platforms like Facebook, and online advertising tools such as Google AdWords, can help you generate a small snippet of code that your web developer can easily add to your website. When users end up on the page where the code is installed, it will add this user to a list of people who have visited this page, and you can then choose to show them specific adverts, tailored to bring them back to that point in their journey.
Pitfall #2: People aren’t sure of what they are getting
When it comes to any online purchase, reassuring your potential customer that they will get what they paid for is paramount. They may well be handing over their hard-earned cash without ever even speaking to a real person from your business. In the case of hospitality, it’s an even more daunting prospect for your potential bookers because, if your offering isn’t what they were expecting, they could find themselves stranded in a foreign city without an acceptable roof over their heads.
Solution
Plenty of images are a great way to mitigate guests’ uncertainty – not just a few pictures of your honeymoon suite, but pictures of the average and less expensive rooms as well, so that guests know what they are getting. While a picture may speak 1000 words, you should also be sure to include written descriptions of what guests will be getting. Is parking on the street or in a secure area? Is breakfast included or extra? Make sure your list of what’s included and excluded is comprehensive, it’s the uncertainty that kills the booking, not the extra £30 for breakfast.
You can also assuage any fears by assuring guests that it’s easy to cancel or change their bookings. Prominently display the aspects of your policy that will reassure your online bookers, such as a 24-hour penalty-free cancellation, for example. Make sure your cancellations policy is as lenient as is feasible for guests who book direct, and that it is at least on par with that of any OTAs you might be listed on.
The best way, however, to reassure your potential guests that they will get all they hoped for and more (and won’t regret booking with you) is with social proof. By providing prospective travellers with evidence of how much other people have enjoyed their stays with you, such as with excerpts from reviews and social posts, you can encourage your website visitors to book as well.
Some great ways to work social proof into your online booking journey are by telling potential guests how many room nights have been booked at your hotel for the coming month, or that you only have a limited number of rooms available for their dates. If you need a simpler solution, sharing reviews from previous satisfied guests on your website will reassure an unconvinced potential guest that people just like them booked, visited, and were satisfied.
