10 Common Hotel Website Design Mistakes

Here are common pitfalls to avoid when planning your hotel website design or redesign.

Your hotel website is one of your most lucrative and profitable sales channels and is working for you 24 hours, 7 days a week to capture hotel bookings but are you making the most out of your hotel website design? Online marketing such as Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media and Pay-Per-Click advertising will drive traffic to your website but your website ultimately holds the key to turning lookers into bookers.

Slow site speed

Hotel website design can be very image-heavy and if the images are not compressed, it can be one of the major reasons behind a slow loading site. A clumsy and clunky hotel web design will not only turn off travellers looking to book through your website and affect your conversion rate, it may also have an impact on your Search Engine rankings as site speed is also a signal favoured in Google’s Search Engine algorithms.

Poor and unclear navigation

You can be as creative as you want with your hotel website design but browsing is a learned behaviour and users are looking for standard forms of navigation when they view a new website. Links should be placed where people can logically find them, and then that they be grouped in logical groupings. In general visitors should only have to navigate three levels at most before they find what they are looking for.

Not having a strong call to action

The purpose of your hotel website design is to nudge the potential customer into enquiring about your hotel or making a direct booking via your website. A strong call to action leading your visitor to book, enquire or phone should be an essential element on all of your pages. In this mobile age, a click-to-call option on a hotel mobile website is also essential for people making hotel bookings via portable devices.

Hard to find contact details

Make it as easy as possible for potential hotel guests to find contact details such as a telephone number or a link to a contact form on each web page. Don’t waste people’s time by making them hunt for details on how to contact you. The harder you make it, the more likely visitors will leave your website and go to a competitor’s site. Make your contact information easy to find especially for travellers on the go.

Non-scannable text

Hotel content needs to be scanned very quickly by prospective hotel bookers. A page of text or alternately screen to screen images can be detracting to visitors. People visiting a website tend to scan the text in an F-shape rather than read it from left to right as you would with printed text. Make the hotel website copy easy to scan by following the tried and tested tricks as documented by usability expert Jacob Nielsen:

• subheads
• bulleted lists
• highlighted keywords
• short paragraphs
• the inverted pyramid
• a simple writing style, and
• de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

Contrasting colour schemes

First impressions count and colour is an important factor in hotel web design. Colour combinations of text and background can make the text hard to read for visitors. They may be so distracted by the colour scheme of your website that they may decide to leave the site altogether and go to another one. The background colours you choose need to add and not detract from your hotel website design.

Annoying hotel website design

There are certain elements seen in older hotel website designs that can be very annoying to a visitor. If you have old-school design elements such as background music, animation or videos that start on entry to the website or pop-up advertisements, you may want to consider redesigning your site. These elements can detract from the useability of the website. Remember high annoyance usually leads to low conversion.

Not having a trustworthy site

A critical hotel website design mistake is not to have an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser to ensure that all data transmitted remains private and secure. As more hotel bookers become internet savvy and conversant about security on the internet, they look for the padlock icon and the prefix ‘https’ in the address bar, to ensure the safety of online information.

Off-site hotel booking engine

As many savvy website designers are incorporating an integrated hotel booking engine on every page of their website, it’s starting to be a design feature hotel bookers take for granted when making online reservations. An online booking engine will increase the number of reservations from your own website while cutting down the amount of commission you pay to third parties, giving you more control over the conversion process.

Not optimising your website

If you spend a lot of money on creating your hotel website design but are reluctant to spend money on online marketing, you are potentially throwing your money away. There is no point in having a beautiful hotel website if it is ranked on page 10 of Search Engines for highly relevant keywords. With more travellers than ever searching for hotels online, it is essential for a hotel website to have high Search Engine visibility.

Make every pixel count – your hotel website is one of the most important sales funnels for your business and it is important that every element of your website design is working overtime to convert traffic into tangible bookings. Whether you are looking for a custom hotel design or you are working to a limited budget, Website Design Works can help you with your next hotel website design or redesign.

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