Webinar recap: 5 tell-tale signs on why you need a new website
Have you been thinking about a new website to keep up with today’s technology standards and to meet your guests’ needs? Find out if it’s time to invest in a new site with these five tell-tale signs and get tips on how to keep your site from growing old.
Watch the webinar below, or jump down to the highlights and key takeaways for a high level overview of the presentation.
Quick highlights
- If it’s been more than three years since you’ve updated your site, it’s probably time to take a closer look at it.
- Use Google Analytics to measure your current site’s success:
- Are your number of sessions (total number of visits to the site) 2 – 5% above the previous year?
- Is your percentage of new sessions (new traffic/visitors) around the 70% benchmark?
- Is your bounce rate 30 – 40% or less?
- Is your conversion rate at least 1.5%?
- Are your guests staying on your site for at least a minute and 30 seconds?
- Focus on a mobile-first world by ensuring your site is responsive and engaging for those on smartphones and tablets.
- Hotel bookings on mobile devices increase 67% in 2016 in the U.S.
- Hotel searches on mobile devices grew 137% in 2016
- Your homepage is going to be your visitors’ first interaction about 80% of the time.
- Content is still king and needs to be high-quality to bring the right visitors to your site.
- 148.3 million travel bookings were made online in 2016.
Key takeaways
- 5 signs you need a new website
- You’ve outgrown it
- Poor experience for mobile users
- High bounce rate
- Website visitors aren’t converting
- It’s not SEO-friendly
- If you’ve added new business segments or upgraded your property, your website should reflect those changes.
- A Content Management System (CMS) website could be a great fit for your property as you control the content and you don’t need a degree in website management to do so.
- Lead with your money pages in your navigation (accommodations, specials/packages, weddings, etc.).
- Use strong and well-placed Calls to Action (CTAs) to achieve a better conversion rate. Also keep in mind colors used and what those colors mean, for example red signals stopping and green means go.
- You should offer online specials and packages and share those details on a unique landing page.
- Provide a seamless transition from your website into your booking engine to make your visitors confident and secure with their booking.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help with your website or Internet marketing.
- Make sure your URLs are user-friendly and use hyphens instead of underscores.
- Don’t miss out on new technology and use it to attract and keep guests on your site:
- Schema (structured data)
- Open Graph for Facebook
- A secure site with an https: designation
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Review widgets
- Stay on top of your website’s performance with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
Conclusion
Before designing a new layout, review your site’s current performance and measure it against the five signs above. You’ll still want to update and refresh your website every few years as technology changes but by having a good understanding of how your website is performing today – you can take the right actions with a new website tomorrow.
Watch the webinar recording and view the presentation for a deeper dive into this topic.