If you’re a tourism operator or travel destination, the biggest driver to your business is likely your website. Your website should be optimised to make the most of your marketing dollars. Engaging content, good design, and a clear path to purchase are your top priorities. Here are our 9 top mistakes to avoid when building or updating your tourism website.
1. “Everyone” is your ideal customer
Casting a wide net to attract customers isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you need to have your ideal audience in mind. It’s important to create ‘visitor personas’ before you build or update your marketing and website – to ensure your website is attracting the right people to your business. This includes what descriptions and words you include on your website, what facilities and features to highlight, and what images to use.
A visitor persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you create from audience and market research. Personas include important information about your target customer (like demographics, behavior, interests, challenges, etc.) and help you better reach them and meet their needs. According to Hubspot Marketing, customers appreciate personalisation, as 96% of marketers say it increases the likelihood of buyers becoming repeat customers, and 94% say it increases sales.
The strongest visitor personas are based on market research. This means you need to dive into insights from your existing and potential customer base through analytics, surveys, customer feedback, social listening, and if you have the option, interviews with your salespeople and customers.
It is also important to refer to your local, regional, state, and national tourism organisation to check what visitor personas and audience groups they are targeting – ideally making sure that your focus aligns with theirs. They will also have a lot of data and research that you can refer to for assistance.
Not sure how to do this? We can help!
2. Hard-to-navigate website
When you’re planning out your website’s user experience (UX), begin by thinking about why a customer is visiting your page. For tourism websites, the most common reasons would be to acquire information about a destination or to book a room or experience. Make it as easy as possible for your potential customer to find what they need. Lead them from “how do I make this experience happen” to “let’s do it!”.
Make sure your website performs well on mobile devices. If users get stuck with a broken menu, links that don’t work (including phone numbers), popup windows that won’t close, or purchase links that go to an external website without warning, they will end their session and look elsewhere.
Tip: before you launch your website, make sure you ask friends, family – and even better – potential customers, if they find your website easy to use? Don’t just rely on your website developer – they are not your customer.
3. Poor photography
You’ve got an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime tour or destination on display. Why not show it off to the best of your ability? Investing in professional photography is an absolute must for tourism businesses. You want to inspire your website visitors to take the next step.
Make sure you include photos with internal and external views, include images with people in them enjoying themselves, showcase the local destination, and include photos of the owners / staff where suitable too. It really is true that a photo says a 1000 words.
Don’t forget a wide range of images and formats (landscape and portrait) so you can showcase them on your website, social media, and printed marketing collateral.
4. The website doesn’t promote the local destination
Let’s face it – unless you own a world-class iconic or famous hotel, no one is booking only your hotel or tour when they visit your region. People firstly make a decision to visit a destination – once they have decided to visit your region, they will then decide where to stay and what to do. So make sure you include details about your destination on your website – what’s nearby, things to see and do, local restaurants etc. Include the local visitor’s guide for your region on your website, as a link or a download. If you have upcoming local events, highlight them on the website.
5. There’s no clear path to purchase or “Book Now” button
All website pages should have a very clear Call-to-Action (CTA). If you’re a tourism operator, you must make it as easy as possible for your customers to book or purchase. In this digital age you need to include the ability for people to check your availability and make a booking direct online. Here are some ways you can create a clear path to securing a booking:
- Detailed descriptions including the property, attraction, or tour facilities and features, room specifications, meal options, departure times etc… and all inclusions
- Show visitor reviews and ratings – provide links to your Google, Facebook, and TripAdvisor reviews
- Highly visible “Book Now” or “Buy Now” buttons – these should be visible on every page of the website
- The ability to check availability for specific dates / times
- Shopping cart to view and follow-through with purchase, even after navigating to other places on the website
- Make sure your booking and cancellation conditions are very clear and easy to find on your website – potential visitors can and will make decisions on where they book based on booking conditions.
6. No Easy-to-Find Contact Details
Make sure people can contact you easily – don’t only offer a form to fill out. Providing clearly visible contact details creates transparency and trust for potential visitors.
In addition, keep in mind that a ‘direct’ booking is more profitable for you (you pay commission on all bookings made through an online booking provider eg. Booking.com) – so the easier it is for people to book with you direct the better it is for you.
7. Site is slow to load
This is true for every website. Load speed is important if you want people to stay on your website. Some tips to enhance load speed:
- Make sure your images are optimised for the web
- Use system fonts where possible
- Remove unnecessary code
- Choose quality web hosting
- Keep an eye on plug-ins – they slow down the load speed – especially if you have a lot of them
And more! Contact us for a website audit.
8. Not measuring website performance
Would you employ a 24/7 salesperson but never measure their performance?
Part of being an effective marketer is taking stock of what works and what doesn’t. With a website this means regularly looking at your analytics or insights and identifying useful information about your existing audience, and where the problem areas might be.
This can include:
- Which pages attract the most visitors
- Demographics of customers using the site
- Marketing campaigns driving traffic to the website (via emails, ads, or social media)
- If customers are using desktop or mobile devices to view the site
- Pages that are dropping users which can indicate a problem (high bounce rates)
- What content visitors are spending the most time reading
Not sure how to put all this information to good use? We can help with that.
9. Trying to do it all yourself
You may be an expert in your area or business, but not everyone can also be an expert marketer. Whether you’re short on time or knowledge, consider bringing in some help. Spend your time doing what you do best and get others to assist with specialist marketing skills if needed – saving yourself the stress and time involved in trying to struggle through it yourself. It also means you can avoid costly mistakes and lost time.
Planet Marketing has over 30 years of experience in the tourism industry, helping clients invest their efforts into building successful tourism experiences, while we assist with the marketing.
We provide marketing services specifically for Australian tourism operators and destinations and have first-hand experience with developing domestic and international tourism across all sectors of the industry.
Read more about our tourism marketing, or get in touch today!
Planet Marketing provides practical and sustainable marketing advice – helping you determine what marketing suits your business best.
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References
Hubspot Marketing: Buyer Persona Research
SEMRush: How to Improve Website Performance
