Research & Strategy
What makes an Effective Website?
There are many things to take into account when assessing whether or not a website is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but this is a somewhat subjective way of looking at things. What you really need to know is is your website achieving what you intended it to when it was designed?
We recognise that hospitality providers, regardless of the type of property that is being promoted, are aiming to increase the numbers of people that come to visit for a meal or a drink, or to stay overnight, or to enjoy the facilities & amenities on offer. This has to be the primary aim of the website and everything else will stem from your key aims & objectives.
Our webmasters are skilled in taking the information about your property and putting this together with any design ideas that you would like incorporated. They will work with you to ensure that you have a website which reflects your property and which conveys the image that you are aspiring to when you are looking to attract guests.
Naturally, if you opt for us to build a brand new website, we will employ proven techniques which will deliver maximum business to you via your website. However, we will also gladly review your existing site if you have one and look at areas in which we can improve things.
We could summarise areas for consideration as follows:
- What is my online personality? Would people have the right impression of my company and its aims if all they had for reference was my website?
- Branding – your company image needs to be consistent in all online & offline marketing. Are your online visitors quickly able to recognise the site as yours without reading it?
- Is my website organised in a clear and consistent way? Is it easy to find the information that you are looking for and are you able to navigate around the site in a logical way?
- Is my website an approachable salesperson? Is the site user friendly and is my accommodation and any other products / services that are available presented in a timely, personal and customer friendly way?
- Have you made allowance for variations in systems and browsers that visitors to your website might be using? It is important to test that your site works on the most popular browsers and that the information that you are intending to convey is accessible to the maximum number of site visitors.
- Security & privacy are important to take into account. If people are doing business with you through your site, it is imperative that they feel that their personal details are safeguarded and that they will not be shared or communicated in any way without prior permission.
- What if someone wants to get in touch? How do your guests want to make contact with you? Do they prefer telephone or email – what about including click-to-talk or click-to-chat, or do you need to invest in a toll free number? Once you know what your visitors prefer, you can tailor website to fulfil more of their expectations.
- If your site visitors do decide that they wish to buy something from you, have you made the process as straightforward as possible for them? Improving online checkout procedures is the single easiest way to increase online sales – make sure that you identify & eliminate any bottlenecks in your checkout process and that you include any upsell opportunities that you can in the process.
- It is important to include an area on your website where journalists and other media representatives can take information from to include in press coverage.
- User Generated Content (UGC) and various types of social media content are increasing in use on the web. People will talk about your property on blogs and forums – even if you do not have your own comment / review section on your site, be aware that people can be talking about you in other places – do you have a strategy in place to monitor what is being said and how o you deal with anything that you believe to be incorrect?
- Even if a visitor to your site does not ultimately make a purchase, you should still benefit from tracking them and target them as a potential future buyer. Encourage people to sign up to your mailing list as a feature of your Home Page.
- Business delivered thanks to natural search costs you less than that generated thank to investment in Pay Per Click campaigns. You may decided that you want to utilise both, but if you have a limited budget, use a search engine position report to highlight what appears to be effective on your site and what does not, and how your site is positioning on the search engines for your target keywords.
- It is important that you know your audience well when taking decisions on the features to include on your website. Are they technologically sophisticated? Do the majority use a dial up connection or do they have broadband? What are your competitors showing to your audience? Answers to these questions will guide your decisions on including elements such as Flash, blogs, audio and video.
One of our knowledgeable consultants would be delighted to discuss your website requirements with you. Why not Contact Us now?