What are the best hotel website features?
What do you think are the reasons why every major hotel in Nigeria has its own customized website?
The Important Hotel Website Features You Need to Integrate
The important features and benefits of a website for hotel business cannot be overemphasized.
You will discover what we learned by analyzing over 10,000 top ranking hotel websites using Ahrefs data and our own in-house data analysis from redesigning 300+ hotel websites in the last 16 years.
Search data from our own Google Analytics has proven that travelers and hoteliers make their decision on where to stay or lodge by visiting hotel websites – first things first.
Hotel website design is an excellent digital marketing strategy to showcase your hotel brand in front of potential travels or visiting guests.
The hotel industry is the most trending when it comes to local searches and ranking. As most leisure travelers use a local keyword in combination with city name to search for hotels.
So there is need to ranking for local hotel search terms.
For example, the best hotels for carnival Calabar, or best hotels for bankers in Nigeria are some of the guests’ keywords or search terms that can convert really well.
25 Things BestSoft Nigeria Learned by Analyzing and Redesigning Hotel Websites
Your hotel website features are the most crucial assets that drive revenue and give prospective guests the first impression of your hotel property.
Getting the design right can boost your entire marketing arsenal.
BestSoft Nigeria uses enhanced hotel features technology and creativity to increase revenue for hotels and destinations in Nigeria and worldwide.
Here are the 25 things we have learned analyzing and redesigning award-winning hotel websites in Nigeria.
Features for Your Hotel Website
The 25 most important parts of a new or redesigned hotel website:
#1: Domain Name/URL
Don’t let past investors, owners, or managers take it with them.
An aged domain name can boost your hotel website authority and increase your ranking in the search engines.
#2: Fast Load Time
Your prospective guests should be able to access your hotel website in 3 seconds or less.
#3: Responsive/Mobile Design
Use CMS that auto detects devices and screen size. We ensure that your website design is adaptive for tablets, mobile, and desktop screen.
Also see: Best Homepage Ever
#4: Phone Number
This should be prominent and obvious on your hotel website design.
This is what makes a good hotel website with a click-to-call on mobile. Always include your phone number with country code, and maps integrated to your website.
When prospective guests from foreign countries visit your town or city and trying to find the hotel, they’ll come with a smartphone to your webpage, open the integrated Google maps to access phones map application automatically, giving them correct direction to your hotel destination.
Google Driving Direction widget
is one of the basic specific features of hotel marketing that drives revenue and online booking. Get a Google Driving Direction widget installed for your website.
#5: Intuitive Navigation
No more than 6 links.
The main navigation forms the basic parts of a hotel that improves user experience on the site and should have about page, accommodations, gallery, specials, booking pages and WordPress blog platform integrated.
This can help drives direct and online bookings and revenue to your site.
#6: WIIFM: What’s in it for me?
One of the features of a good hotel is “what’s in it for me?
The kind of question asked by prospective guests and returning customers before a booking decision is made.
You need to write powerful one killer headline about your UVP that can convert prospective guests into instant customers at your hotel destination.
#7: Eye-catching Image
So far you’ve learned some of the hotel features lists but another basic feature is eye-catching imagery. You need one powerful arresting image that conveys your UVP.
This could be your hotel front-building or a well-polished most expensive decorated VIP room photos that speak for your hotel property.
#8: SEO Strategy
Using SEO plumbing and content for hotel website is a strategy for building your site design around key search terms used by prospective guests in search engines.
Without proper keyword research, there is no SEO for your hotel website design.
#9: Showcase Specials
The importance of hotel website in running special deals to wow guests can increase revenue. Prospective guests at any hotels worldwide are trained and always happy to seek discounts.
So you need to offer discounts for a first timer and returning guests.
#10: Dynamic Personalization
Change messages base on geography and user behavior.
#11: Easy Booking Process
A single click booking process converts prospective guests to paying guests instantly. A confusing booking can cause abandonment. Please take note of this when designing your new hotel website or redesigning an existing site.
#12: Direct Booking Benefits
Inform prospective guests the benefits of direct booking. If you don’t tell them early you could lose them to OTAs. Give them great reasons to book direct. Some of these features of a hotel need to be available on your site to encourage and increase bookings.
#13: Reservation Recovery Tech
You can use a hotel booking system CMS to auto send email to abandoned booking searchers. These are the advantages of website marketing that allow you to follow up with prospective guests and close the deals.
#14: Urgency
Integrate scarcity and psychology stimulates conversion ratios.
#15: Exit Capture
Pop-up incentives when prospects try to leave. Exit pop by Hello Bar or Sumo Me is great for capturing emails and would allow you to enjoy the benefits of a good website through email marketing.
#16: Social Validation
You can build trust with testimonials and reviews online.
#17: Fresh Destination Content
Prove that your property is the epicenter.
#18: Social Media Links
These allow you to create an army of evangelists that get you more shares, tweets, and retweets across many social channels and build fans and followers as parts of your social media marketing strategy.
#19: Live Chat
A live chat allows your hotel website design to connect prospects to reservation or booking agents in real time.
#20: Interactive Map
Showcase your hotel’s location near roadways and popular attractions.
#21: Google Analytics Tracking
It allows you to monitor results and user experience or behavior. You can integrate this with Heat Map to track where on your website prospects are moving their mouse across or which parts of your website generate most clicks.
#22: Google Webmaster Tools
Get alerts on critical SEO issues about your website.
#23: Schema Integration
The code required by Google to rank you locally and correctly.
#24: Retargeting Cookies
Wow! It makes it so easy to follow visitors around the web – after they leave your site.
#25: Meetings and Groups Lead Capture
Establish relationships across the board and connect with hospitality influencers to empower your sales team.
That’s what we have learned analyzing and creating hotel websites using proven traffic generation and website user experience conversion technology to improve the property’s bottom line for our hotel clients to enjoy the benefits of hotel websites.
The design of a hotel website has a huge impact on the benefits of website and how likely it is to attract prospective guests to your business.
Here are the benefits of a new website or website redesign for the best hotels on the entire Internet.
Hotel Website Designs
So a great website design for your hotel can be a powerful tool and marketing avenue for establishing your brand. In the hotel business, a website gives the chance to present your services and showcase your hotel building, rooms, and facilities in a gallery page.
At BestSoft Nigeria, we build hotel websites, proven to drive more direct bookings. The benefits of having a great hotel website, more than 300+ hoteliers trust us!
Don’t miss: Best Weather Websites
10 Benefits Why Your Hotel Needs a Website
Your hotel needs a website and there are lots of reasons and here are the 10 benefits of a website redesign, and having a great website for your hotel.
#1: Convenience for guests
Prospective guests prefer using the Internet to search for hotels and destinations. This is much easier and faster than any time in the past as millions of searches are done daily with a great number of them from mobile users.
#2: Provide Greater Exposure
The same website benefits for small business is applicable to your hotel website in terms of visibility to all your potential and current guests and encourages repeat bookings.
Your customers and guests in Nigeria and all over the world won’t need to call for enquiries before knowing how many rooms are available.
They can check and book for rooms even before they commence their traveling.
#3: Say so much more
With a hotel website design, you can write as much as you want unlike TV/Radio advertisement, Print and Media Adverts, Yellow Pages or Brochure.
So you can say so much more on a website without space restriction or time restriction than you could in any other platform.
#4: Inexpensive and Effective Advertising
Your prospective guests can research your hotel and have a better knowledge of room availability and location in their own time instead of relying on short TV or Radio ads to gather all the information they need.
#5: Fulfills your brand promise
With an expert site design and a great search ranking – you can hire BestSoft Nigeria’s pros to do it all and help your hotel projects a professional image online that will separate you from the competition as the best destination hotel of choice.
A professionally designed website is an extension of your brand. A website for a hotel is part of the experience of doing business with guests.
#6: Saves Money
With a website, you can save money when it comes to advertising as it helps you deliver guaranteed targeted visitors, unlike print media, postage, flyers, banners or cost for brochures.
You can keep your site up to date with the latest trending topics in your industry.
This is one of the various benefits of an updated website unlike print media like newspaper and magazine that cannot be updated or edited once it goes to the printing house.
#7: Always Available
A great benefit of owning a website for your hotel is its availability 24/7 and gives room to communicate with prospective guests in real time through live chat, click-to-call or contact form.
Your website FQA page is always available to answer your customer’s questions for you anytime you’re unable to answer the phone.
#8: Saves Time
A website allows you to spend less time on customer support. It saves as a billboard that provides solutions to customers’ needs and questions even before they dial your phone.
You can invest in growing your business than waste time on the phone answering customers’ questions.
#9: Create Measurable Results
Having a hotel website gives you the tools to track results and analyze data such as unique visitors, page views and location.
You can use this for your online adverts such as retargeting or search engine optimization. This can help you increase conversion and sales ration.
#10: Test New Ideas
You can test your new strategies and message before committing financial resources. You can quickly publish new content to your website with the help of Content Management System (CMS).
Conclusion
Every hotel website must have important features integrated into it to enjoy the benefits of generating revenue from the website.
What do you think are the important hotel website features that I’ve not mentioned?
Please let me know in the comment below and I’ll include them and give you credit for your suggestion!
