What's stopping your guest from booking?
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The document discusses how to improve a website and booking engine experience to increase guest bookings. It notes that 44% of guests will abandon a website if it is not usable within 15 seconds. It provides tips on optimizing the website navigation, room detail pages, and booking engine checkout process. Specific recommendations include using a custom booking engine theme, intuitive unit calendars, and streamlining add-on packages. The goal is to create visually appealing and easy-to-use online experiences that drive bookings.
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What's stopping your guest from booking?
- 1. WHAT’S STOPPING YOUR GUEST FROM BOOKING? 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210
- 2. ABOUT ME 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 • Josh Wise • VP Customer Success • 8 Years • Six y/o daughter
- 3. OVERVIEW 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 • Website Guest Experience • Booking Engine Experience
- 4. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Poll Question
- 5. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Website Usability FEEL USABILITY LOOK 15 Seconds 38% 44%
- 6. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
- 7. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
- 8. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
- 9. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
- 10. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE NAVIGATION
- 11. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE DO
- 12. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE DON’T
- 13. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE Room Detail Pages
- 14. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 WEBSITE EXPERIENCE Room Detail Pages
- 15. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Poll Question
- 16. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Booking Engine Usability
- 17. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Custom Booking Engine Theme
- 18. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 BE EXPERIENCE Custom Booking Engine Theme
- 19. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Custom Booking Engine Theme BE EXPERIENCE
- 20. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Custom Booking Engine Theme BE EXPERIENCE
- 21. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Custom Booking Engine Theme BE EXPERIENCE
- 22. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Quick Booking Widget
- 23. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 BE EXPERIENCE
- 24. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 BE EXPERIENCE
- 25. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Individual Unit Calendars
- 26. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 BE EXPERIENCE
- 27. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Add-On Packages
- 28. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 DO BE EXPERIENCE
- 29. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 DON’T BE EXPERIENCE
- 30. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 DO BE EXPERIENCE
- 31. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 DON’T BE EXPERIENCE
- 32. 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Mobile-Friendly BE EXPERIENCE
- 33. CONCLUSION 3801 E Florida Ave. Suite 800 Denver, CO 80210 Sales: 866-360-8210 Email: Josh.Wise@RezStream.com Direct Line: 303-872-4063 www.RezStream.com/Blog • Visually appealing website • Minimal navigation items • Ordered with revenue drivers • Room detail pages • Investigate your booking engine
Notes de l'éditeur
- Welcome Within the GOTOMEETING app is the ability to ask questions. I’ll try and cover as many as I can at the end of the presentation.
- Ok, before we get started I want see how many of you think your website is up to snuff. Is your website modern website for today’s visitors? Yes No Not Sure
- I’m going to throw out some stats here: 55% of website visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page (Chartbeat) 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the layout is unattractive. (Adobe) 44% of visitors will leave a website if there is no contact info aka Phone number (KoMarketing) As lodging providers we need to immediately engage visitors to our website with a visually appealing design. As we’ve learned these website visitors today are pretty dang picky aren’t they? Let’s take a look at some websites who don’t accomplish this visually appealing design.
- Let me start by saying I’m not trying to hurt people’s feelings here, I’m trying to educate. I’ve done my best to omit property names in the rare event I’m showing your properties website. This website hurts my head. This actually does the opposite of calming me down, it makes me feel trapped in a box. BYE BYE next property please.
- This one actually had a nice big picture window that engaged me visually. However they missed on a couple things. What are we doing with the logo? Let’s not get cute to the point our branding looks tacky. Please….. Notice in the upper right here it’s big empty space? What would be imperative to have in the header of your website? How about that phone number that we just learned 44% of visitors will leave if they can’t find right away. GUYS…………..our website’s goal is to build trust and share the experience of the property with the action we want our visitors to take which is BOOKING a reservation. Let’s not hide our phone numbers from people….Please. Last thing I want to point out……………….The MAJORITY of all visitors coming to your website will start on your HOME PAGE. The very first button in your navigation should NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR be the “Home” button. They are already on the home page, unless we want them to close their browser and literally go home, let’s not give them an option to go home when they typically start there. If you feel you must have a “Home” button put it at the end of the navigation. Most web users know by clicking on the logo you go back to the home page.
- I’m 35 and married with a child. I’m a demographic that appeals to B+B’s, Hotels, Vacation Rentals, etc. If I saw a website like this, the first thing that comes to my head is………………….IF THIS PROPERTY HAS A WEBSITE FROM 2001 AND AREN’T WILLING TO INVEST IN THEIR BRAND, IMAGINE WHAT THE REST OF THE PROPERTY IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE. That’s my opinion and some of you may think that’s blunt……………but I guarantee people visiting your website are thinking much worse than I am. This particular example has unappealing colors, a framed looking website that doesn’t fill my computer screen, their navigation starts with “home” button when I’m on the home page and the pictures are tiny. Breaking many rules on this one.
- Here’s somebody that got it right. Big pictures Nice logo Phone number at the top Clean and professional If you guys aren’t sure if you have a nice website or not, reach out to me and I’ll spend my time giving you as much advice as you’re willing to listen to.
- Let’s talk a little bit about DO’s and DON’Ts with your navigation. First off to make sure we’re all on the same page, the navigation is the buttons that your visitors will use to navigate your website. These are the different sections of your website. Looking at this picture here this should help make sure we’re using the same terminology related to the word navigation. On the left we have examples of horizontal navigation and on the right we have a vertical navigation. This is a preference thing, I personally don’t care which one you have nor have I seen statistics that show one works better than an other. What I do know is we all read top to bottom and left to right. Regardless if it’s a website, email, text message, news paper, etc. Top to bottom and left to right, so with that being said we need to make sure our navigation is visible to all and ordered with the most important items. Let’s look at some examples.
- DO……………. Have a limited number of navigation buttons and be sure to order them based on what makes you money. In example 1 here, they start with accommodations, packages, meetings, weddings (the things that make them money). They have 7 sections which is about the limit I would shoot for. Example 2 has six sections which I very much like. It’s rooms, weddings, specials, spa. They are ordered based on what makes the property money right. Notice how they have “Things to Do”, this one is important because nobody stays in their room 24/7, however it doesn’t drive direct revenue so noticed it’s placed at the end of the list. Example 3 is a vertical example, notice how rooms aren’t first but they have a call to action to “make a reservation” first which is ok. Then they go packages, rooms, dining. Maybe theyr property does inclusive packages which is why they led with packages. Now this example has 8 sections which is a little rich so could they have put “afternoon tea” under another section or could they have combined weddings with events? - Think about it like this…………………have you ever gone to the grocery store and want a can of tomatoes? You have whole, peeled, sliced, big, small, etc. Let’s not overwhelm our visitors with to many options that don’t have immense value to us or them.
- Here are some don’t’s……….. First one here starts with “our hotel” with the very first page being about their policies. Guys……………are we trying to entice the visitor to book or are we trying to scare them away with our rules. If you want to book lodging, you find a property website on the search engines and make your way to the website. Is the first thing you want to see about all your policies and what is off limits or is the first thing you want to see about the rooms and the experience that the property offers? The second example I found this bad boy buried at the bottom of the website, not the top. Remember we all read top to bottom and left to right. On top of that they have 10 sections to this website. So imagine my concern as visitor when A) I couldn’t find the navigation and B) I’m overwhelmed with options. Why in the world are our T+C in the middle of the navigation? Why is our Home button the first option when the majority of people start on the home page? This third example is vertical which is fine. But they start with About us (not everyone wants to read your history but those that do will find it) Then the second option is “photos” but those photos lead to the rooms. Let’s not confuse people by trying to get fancy with our wording. Photos should be photos not room pages. - Can’t we combine directions with contact us? Do we really need an extra section just for directions?
- Next thing I want to share is about Room Detail Pages. So what exactly is that? Room detail pages are pages on yoru website dedicated to information about your individual room (if you’re a B+B with unique rooms) or your room types (if you’re a hotel, with many units of the same kind, like king bed rooms or queen bed rooms). Either way You need to have multiple pages dedicated to your rooms be it individual unique rooms or several different room types. In this example you see this is an individual room. It’s showing……… The room name A detailed description Amenities Pictures The Price And a call to action to book it
- This example is a property that offers unit types (many of one). This is one of their many 1 bedroom units. You see pictures, a detailed description along with a call to action to book.
- Before I move on to talk about the Bookign Engine Usability I want to ask another poll question. After seeing those slides on website usability I’ll ask the same question. Is your website still modern? Yep Nope Not sure, I was eating lunch
- Having a gorgeous user friendly website is what we’ve talked about so far. But now I want to talk about what most of you guys overlook and that’s the actual booking experience. This is equally or more important in the guests purchase journey because they now have everything they need to make a purchase decision and they have their credit card out and they are ready to buy. Their mind has been made and any hiccup in this booking process can kill the entire online reservation. We’re going to be going through the guests booking process and looking at tips you all need to make happen.
- Why is a custom theme’d BE important? It allows the visitors to seamlessly transition from research mode (on your website) to purchase mode (in the booking engine). Any “red flags” that arise during that buying cycle transition or purchase cycle disrupt the guest from continuing the buying cycle. On the next couple of slides I’m going to show you what it should look like and what it shouldn’t. I’ve done my best to omit property names……Guys this isn’t about hurting feelings, this is about getting educated on how to convert lookers to bookers at a higher rate. DECREASE COSTS: Your BE vendors should have instructions for your web masters to do this as opposed to forcing you to use them and pay high hourly fees.
- This IS a custom theme. See how the BE solution actually matches the website. It’s not just a header/footer with whatever BE colors the vendor has picked. It uses the same black, tan, red colors of the website throughout the booking solution
- This IS NOT a custom theme. They did a good job of at least having the navigation from the website here. But there is blue and orange and the booking engine is neon dark brown, neon green, tan and red. No good.
- This isn’t a custom theme. They took the background teal and matched the website but the BE itself is white and orange. Not even in the ball park of a smooth transition.
- All this one had was a logo of the property and the vendor has chosen blue and white as there theme. There isn’t even an effort to make a smooth transition for the guest to encourage the continuation of the buying cycle. What happens if your website colors are Pink or Yellow, imagine the guests experience when going from your website to this blue booking engine. These theme’s are one of many things I pay attention to when evaluating vendors to determine if they go the extra mile to care about properties or not. Don’t even get me started on vendors taking short cuts or we’ll be here all day.
- What is a quick booking widget? It’s a booking widget that should be placed on every page of your website. The reason for this is that some visitors like to read about the history of your property, while some want to see pictures of the room, others only care about prices. So who are we to determine when a visitor is ready to make a purchase decision. We’re not, therefore we should allow them the quickest and easiest access into the online booking engine from any and all pages of our websites to ensure they have a vehicle to buy, when they are ready to do so.
- By having the quick booking widget on the home page it allows easy access for repeat guests as well as those visitors who have limited time to see the room offerings or those visitors who only care about pricing.
- Notice on this screen shot they have the quick booking widget on the about the Inn page. The point again being………every visitor to the website is unique. They all progress through the buying cycle in different ways, so let’s make it as convenient for them as possible to book online when their ready, REGARDLESS OF WHAT PAGE THEY ARE ON, while on our website.
- Individual unit calendars. There comes a time when individuality is a good thing, right? That time as it relates to the booking engine is when you have individual units. Those units are all unique in terms of the theme or their amenities or even their views. As a result you sell them individually and therefore garner different pricing than your other units. As a B+B you aren’t a hotel with one size fits all, you don’t have room types or many of one single unit. One of the greatest mistakes I see B+B’s make when it comes to their online booking offering is by not having individual unit calendars. Your websites should have unique rooms pages. Have a page dedicated to the John Wayne Room and a different page dedicated to the Marilyn Monroe room. They are unique and should stand alone. As a result, they should also have individual unit booking calendars that only show the availability of that unit. Once a website visitor browses yoru website and determines that the John Wayne room is the one for them, don’t dump them into your main booking engine only to have to scroll and search for that John Wayne unit they fell in love with and are ready to book.
- Here is an example of an individual unit calendar. I’m a guest navigating the website. I find a unique room called the Master Suite. I love the pictures, the description and I’m willing to pay the price. Notice how there is an individual unit calendar right there on that room detail page that shows me when that unit I love IS and ISN’T available. This allows me to adjust my dates of travel in order to get what I want. What most of you do, is make them enter your booking engine, pick their dates, search for their favorite unit only to have to repeat those steps over and over until they get pissed off and leave your website. These individual unit calendars help keep your guests engaged and give them exactly what they are ready to buy in a user friendly way. This helps increase conversion rates drastically. So as soon as you get off this webinar you call your BE providers and demand individual unit calendars!
- WHY ARE PACKAGES IMPORTANT FOR THOSE OF YOU NOT USING THEM OR ON THE FENCE WITH OFFERING THEM? People are coming to your property for the experience – Offering packages can help enhance that experience for them. Here’s what you should be thinking about What demographic visits your property most? Is it couples, families, singles, business travelers? What do they do? If it’s couples let’s offer romance packages (flowers/chocolates/roses, massage, peddi’s, wine), if it’s families let’s offer items to compliment attractions near by (hiking package, bike tour, shows, muesums, dinning) Whatever your demographic and whatever they do while there, let’s capitalize on it Now, if you’re like many other Innkeepers I’ve spoken to you may be thinking “That’s a lot of extra work and coordinating and I’m already wearing multiple hats” I couldn’t agree more. So instead of scrapping the idea all together, find out what’s a package your guests would buy that you can order in bulk that won’t go bad. An example would be a hiking package that includes bottled water, sunscreen, sunglasses, bandaids, etc. Adding packages on your BE is a great way to enhance your guests experience, while increasing your average transaction price without having to touch your rates. Now………let’s look at some DO’s and DON’T’s when it comes to packages in your BE.
- DO……………..have a nice picture with your package item.
- DON’T use cartoon pictures to sell your packages. DON’T not use pictures at all. We’re trying to represent a certain value for this add on package and don’t want to give people the impression it’s not worth what we’re asking them to pay for.
- DO……………..Have a nice description that helps sell the value of your package.
- DON’T……lack a thorough description to entice the guest to add that package. In this example I’m being asked to pay $118 for a 7 course meal for two people, but I have no idea what those courses might include. This is a perfect example of a missed opportunity to WOW someone into a purchase to enhance their experience while staying at the property.
- 65% of same day reservations are made from a smartphone (Statisticbrain) Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know how important it is for your website to be mobile friendly. Our clients are seeing 30-40% of all their traffic coming from their mobile devices. That’s just traffic to the website. Those same properties are seeing anywhere from 5-25% book online via their mobile device. Simply put guys, if your website isn’t mobile friendly you’re about 5 years late to the game. If your booking engines aren’t mobile friendly you’re about 2 years late to the game. For those of you that haven’t addressed one or both of these, I know what you’re saying because I have the same conversation all the time. You’re thinking, “Our annual occupancy is X and we’ve increased revenue for each of the last Y years.” That’s great, no one can deny that. But imagine how much better those numbers could be if you weren’t missing out on 40% of the traffic out there and 25% of the traffic that wants to have a good experience by booking online via their mobile device. Let’s not make our jobs as InnKeepers harder because we’re to stubborn, lazy or cheap to adapt to our guests needs.
- Recapping………… Let’s step up our game to visually appealing websites. (If you aren’t sure if yours is, call me) Let’s follow the navigation tips we reviewed to make the guests buying journey easier (Not sure if yours is good, call me) Let’s build out room details pages. Want examples, or advice (call me) Review every step of your booking engine to ensure it’s user friendly, informative and keeps the guest on the buying path. (Need some help, call me) When I say call me, that doesn’t mean I’m going to go full used car salesman on you, I’m literally here to help the industry. If you want to learn more about our services great, I’ll pass you to a customer success consultant but I’m not trying to sell you anything and I mean that. Write down that link to our Blog. Nothing but education 24/7 based on our experience with other properties just like you. No propaganda from RezStream, just education. We hope all this helps you guys out as you already have tough jobs with multiple hats being worn.