Untitled - Hospitality Maldives

More Web Site Hints,
Tips, and Tricks –
Unwrapped
When it comes to boosting web site sales,
search engine optimization (SEO) has become
the first and last choice by many web
marketing companies. It seems that SEO
has become the current Rx prescription for
non-producing web sites. In itself, SEO can
be very beneficial, but it is certainly not the
cure-all that some web marketers claim.
The ironic thing about search engine optimization
is that it actually needs to begin with
the structure of the site itself. Applying SEO
to an improperly designed hotel web site is
like adding high-test gas to a car that doesn’t
have an engine or transmission. It’s still going
nowhere.
Designing a functional web site is not rocket
science, but there are some fundamental design
necessities to produce a marketable web
site. Don’t get caught up by web designers
who want to create a work of art instead of
a hotel web site that sells rooms. Don’t think
that a hotel site only needs to look good.
Flash elements are still a bad idea and entire
flash web sites, a new trend, may be great
for museums and art galleries, but terrible
for hotel web sites.
There are still many web designers who don’t
understand the purpose of a hotel web site.
In their eagerness to make an attractive site,
many completely ignore the interaction between
search engines and web site content;
how they must compliment one another. Text
content sells rooms, yet many designers treat
it like an after-thought. Text is what search
engines see in order to rank a web site.
There are just a few key components of a
well designed site; thoroughly researched
and well-thought-out Meta Tags; a simple
site navigation theme; well written sales
text; a good link strategy; a good booking
engine; use of low density photography; and
knowledge of how consumers choose hotels.
It’s amazing how many sites violate one or
more of these essentials.
Many hotel web sites today are producing
upwards of 30% to 50% or more of their hotel’s
total room business. Some hotels claim
even higher production numbers and yet, on
the other hand, there are still many hoteliers
who are facing dismal production but love
the ‘look’ of their sites, so they do nothing.
Many hoteliers have allowed themselves to
get hung up in the technical subterfuge of
measuring the effectiveness of their site by
‘hits’, ‘unique user visits’, and other technical
jargon used by web designers who know
little about selling rooms online. I can’t count
the number of web sites, I’ve reviewed, that
are completely dysfunctional from a search
and/or sales stand-point, but get a descent
number of ‘unique users’. The problem is
they don’t book many reservations.
The average hotel web site converts less than
four reservations from every one hundred
visitors; many even fewer. A well designed
site can increase conversions by two or three
times. The true measure of a well designed
web site is the number of reservations it generates.
A good booking engine will give you
the ‘look-to-book’ ratio of your site. If it’s only
average, you can do something about it.
I hear from many hoteliers, who have spent
hundreds or even thousands of dollars for
the development of their web sites that are
now very unhappy with their site’s production.
They have web sites that are attractive
brochures instead of sales productive web