Designing a travel website is more than including pretty images of fascinating destinations and believing that your customers make their booking. It’s a highly accurate science, and here’s how you can get it right.
The days have gone when travelers used to be happy with the services proposed by offline travel agents and group tours. In today’s time of millennials and digital natives, travelers are highly selective. They want something out of the usual. They are looking for highly curated travel experiences that are well-tailored to suit their personalities.
According to travel statistics by Google for 2018,
- 36% of travelers would pay more for tailored information
- 57% of travelers feel that travel websites should customize information based on their past bookings and personal preferences
- 1 in 3 travelers use digital assistants to research and book their travel
Change of Choices and Tastes
People’s touring preferences have changed significantly in recent years. If they want to travel, its location has to be historical and religious sites, rich in culture and heritage. The earlier generations considered travel as something to do once they retire.
Fast forward to today. For the younger generations – the millennials and the digital natives, travel is part and bundle of their lives. The number of people going on inspiration trips has grown by a massive 150% in the last couple of years.
Solo travel has also increased dramatically. According to a survey, almost 80% of travelers are like to travel solo. Additionally, the number of people who like to spend more on unique and customized travel adventures has increased significantly.
All this is good news for travel and tourism website owners. If you can afford travelers with the right information at the right time, tailored to meet their particular needs, then you are more likely to change it into a sale.
Every single part on your travel website should aim to meet this goal – present users with the right information at the right time.
Now, that’s easier said than done. How do you ensure that your travel website is loaded with the right features? How to nail the user interface and user experience, so that you can make a sale? While no method works for all, here are some general best practices that will help you build the perfect travel website that engages and connects with your target audience.
Let’s start
- A Mobile-Friendly Website Design
If you don’t have a website that is mobile-friendly or mobile-first, then you are missing out a large part of your possible sales. According to a report, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a site, if they had difficulty in loading it on their mobile device. 40% of users are likely to visit a competitor’s site if the mobile site of their chosen brand takes too long to load.
These percentages are too big to overlook. With these stats keeping in mind, you have to start working on making a mobile-friendly, and responsive travel website, which gives your users an optimized booking experience on all devices.
- Search Forms
Search is the core of all travel websites. Most travelers who research travel destinations online do not have any particular place in mind. Rather, they are scouting for all the options that grab their fancy. So, an effective search engine is one of the top, must-have travel website features, and you need to ensure that you get it right.
If you strip it down to the basics, then travel search is simple. It should answer the questions – “when” and “where.” Additionally, you can also enhance the search feature by adding other filters that your target audience is likely to use.
For instance, if you are a tour operator providing to adventurous travelers, then it’s a great idea to include “type of vacation,” as a field in the search form. Using this filter, travelers can search for specific destinations that are fit for water sports, hikes, adventure activities, etc.
- Transparency
According to a survey, nearly 53% of users drop their travel searches when they are presented with the total price, including taxes and other charges at the last stage of their search. If you want to decrease shopping cart abandonment rates, then you need to disclose all the fees and different charges at every step of the way.
Here are several ways in which you can make your travel website transparent and win the trust and loyalty of your potential customers:
- Mention included and excluded things– If the hotelier offers free Wi-Fi and/or breakfast mention it. Alternatively, if the hotelier charges a resort fee, tourist taxes or other extra fees then make sure to reveal this early on. This helps to develop a clear line of communication with your users.
- Always provide Complete Information – If the booking fee is refundable until a particular date and not refundable after that, make sure to specify this clearly, so that your customers know what they are getting into.
Simply put, be transparent with all kinds of extra charges and don’t spring any surprise fees on the user at the time of checking out.
- Always show Proofs and Reviews
According to a survey, nearly 96% of travelers read reviews before they complete a travel booking. Reviews are the bread and butter of the travel and tourism business. Hence, it’s necessary that you include honest user reviews on your travel website.
Here are a few suggestions to include reviews and testimonials on your site:
- Always Show Third-Party Reviews – TripAdvisor, Yelp are some of the trusted travel review websites. Get your eCommerce website design services company to combine third-party reviews on your website so that your users get access to actual reviews.
- Include Video – To make your travel website stand out from your opponents, you can add video reviews on your site. To get more videos up, provide small freebies to users – like extra loyalty points, free breakfast on their next stay, as an incentive for them to submit video reviews.
Conclusion
Operating a travel business is highly competitive, and your website is your calling card. It serves as the first touchpoint for all your users. Hence, it’s necessary that you make the best first impression. Apart from the five design points highlighted above, you need to concentrate on enhancing the overall user experience by adding high-quality images, decreasing the loading time of your website, adopting a mobile-first approach, and more.
Building a travel website that offers high growth rates is not a one-time process. You have to regularly work on it and use various A/B testing to optimize the site. Additionally, you have to assure that you provide your users with a consistent UX/UI so that your site remains familiar and easy to use.
