Conversion rate optimization techniques for hotel websites
What is conversion rate optimization?
In simple terms, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is how you increase your looker to booker ratio. By doing this CRO improves the relationship between the number of people visiting a site vs the number of people taking a purchase related action.
From a hospitality perspective, especially looking from a hotel’s point of view we can consider the relationship between website visitors and completed bookings done through a booking engine.
By default, Google Analytics measures the conversion rate by the bookings to sessions ratio. However, if necessary this setting can be changed so CRO is measured as bookings to Visitors/Users instead. The latter change will give a higher ratio and one might argue is more realistic. Yet since a majority in the industry is using a sessions based conversion ratio, there may be many advantages to sticking with the default option. Over a period of time, any anomalies will be averaged out and hence when focusing on the long term objective of continuous improvement the metric used to measure conversion rate might not have a significant impact.
Once the overall average conversion ratio is understood this then becomes the starting point for the optimization process. This ratio can be further evaluated by season or even by a GEO market to get an even better understanding on seasons and markets to target and improve the overall conversion ratio.
What are the ways conversion ratio can be improved ?
Book direct incentives
If you see that most of your traffic is from brand and related searches, this indicates that these visitors have also been exposed to your brand on other websites. In the case of the hospitality industry this would most probably be from an OTA or a review site. Therefore it is important that the official website has clear Call to Actions (CTAs) and incentives to book directly through the brand website.
A recent study reviled 78% of non millennials are likely to check an online platform prior to booking a hotel. Due to the above, the likelihood of a potential customer visiting a website during their booking journey is high.
Relationship between book direct incentives and conversion rate
- Price
Policies such as a Best Rate Guarantee go a long way in building the confidence of potential customers when purchasing from a website. In general having a commitment to ensuring that an official website has the best available rates online, will be highly advantages. Once a system is in place to ensure that only the best rates are available, enabling a rate comparison tool/ widget on a website will further enhance the benefit of the pricing strategy. - Value addition
Complimentary spa treatments, complimentary meal upgrades and room upgrades are simple but cost-effective ways to offer memorable incentives to potential guests at minimal cost to the hotel - Flexibility
Offering the most flexible booking terms on a website coupled with a strong pricing strategy assists in building the confidence of potential customers.
AB testing
Once developed, the majority of websites are rarely reviewed in order to evaluate the user experience of the potential customer. By using heat map tools such as Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity and Crazy Egg, digital marketers can identify which areas of the websites are most clicked on or looked at in order to rearrange the content to suit the preferences of the visitor. When evaluated, this process coupled with conversion rate optimization, enables a website to serve contemporary content that is highly user centric which will eventually drive a higher conversion rate as well.
Funnel analysis
As a natural extension to focusing on heatmaps, funnel based analysis helps to identify high traffic landing pages and the pages with higher than average exit ratios. Essentially once implemented a funnel analysis will assist you to identify where users are entering and exiting a site so these pages can be given the right amount of attention when optimizing on page content.
A typical funnel for a hotel website will consist of :
- Visits to Homepage
- Visitors to the booking engine
- Visitors to guest information page
- Reservation Completion
Comparing the funnel ratios at each stage along with improvements done to the page content and the look and feel will will help optimize these pages to their full potential.
Know your audience
Understanding a website’s core visitor profiles and catering to their specific needs in terms of content will become a major CRO improvement factor.
Most well-established hotels, attract visitors from all parts of the world to their website. When evaluating web traffic from a GEO perspective, if a hotel identifies that they have a significant portion of visitors coming from non-English speaking markets, the ideal strategy would be to have the site translated to languages corresponding with the relevant source markets.
Similarly, evaluating website traffic in terms of demographics such as age and gender will also reveal a specific browsing pattern. By evaluating these patterns, the areas that need to be improved can be identified in order to help drive the conversion intent of the visitors.
CRO best practices
There are many best practices for conversion rate optimization for websites, but in reality, it is a step by step process to continually look to improve month after month over a significant period of time to ensure long term success. At Webentryx we specialize in revenue centric, data driven digital marketing and CRO is a large part of our strategic approach. Contact us for a free consultation where one of our strategists will audit and evaluate your website to establish which CRO strategies work best.