hotel website, winery website, business website

1. Is Your Website Ready for
Business?

2. Roger Coryell, CTA
• Managing Partner and digital lead for Brandhound, a Northern California
marketing agency.
• VP/Marketing and Operations for California travel site DogTrekker.com.
Roger is Google Analytics and AdWords certified. He and his team have won seven
HSMAI Adrian Awards for hospitality marketing campaigns.
Brandhound works with winery trade organizations, DMOs and visitor-facing
businesses to attract visitors to our region. We build mobile-friendly, search-engine
optimized websites, plan and execute ad campaigns and email campaigns, and
produce beautiful and effective print collateral.
Member, Mendocino Winegrowers, Russian River Winegrowers

3. Today’s Agenda
A checklist to
make sure your
website is
ready for
business…

4. Is your site mobile-friendly?

5. Is your site
mobile-friendly?
In our survey of visitor-
facing business websites in
Mendocino County, 46
percent are not mobile-
friendly

6. Why is mobile-friendly important?
• Approx. 40 percent of online DTC wine
sales are made with mobile devices**
• Over 40 percent of typical hotel website
traffic is coming from mobile devices**
• Over 30 percent of hotel bookings are
made with mobile devices *
• 80 percent of last-minute hotel bookings
are made using a mobile devices *
* Source: Travel Flash report by Criteo
** Source: Brandhound client data
40%
60%
PERCENTAGE
Mobile wine sales Desktop wine sales

7. SEO benefits of a mobile site
• In 2018, mobile searches surpassed desktop searches for the first
time

8. Google rewards mobile in search
• Starting in March 2018, Google is officially indexing
mobile sites first
• Since 2015, non-mobile sites are seeing as much as a
50 percent reduction in potential search traffic*
• 70% of the websites displayed in the first page of a
Google search are mobile-friendly*
* Source: Blue Corona

9. Google has a test for mobile-friendly
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

10. Is your site “secure”?

11. Make sure your site uses https://
If the URL on your website doesn’t say https:// incoming traffic may not
be properly attributed (and your search traffic will suffer)

12. https:// is critical for user
experience

13. Google gives https:// sites a big
advantage in search ranking

14. HTTPS means incoming traffic is
tracked more accurately
• Traffic from a secure site to an non-secure site will not always be
properly attributed in Google Analytics

15. Does your site load quickly?

16. Does your site load quickly?
Google penalizes
slow sites in search
results, and users
hate it… you will
lose business if
your site is slow.

17. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Test your speed here

18. Do you have e-commerce integration
set up in Google Analytics?

19. Why set up e-commerce integration?
With e-commerce tracking in
Google Analytics, you are
able to connect the specific
dollar value of each booking
or transaction to your
analytics.
See where converting traffic
is coming from, and use the
revenue information to find
out what ads and channels
are working.

20. Why e-commerce tracking?
See which channels, sites and ads are generating revenue

21. Are you tagging incoming links?

22. Are you tagging incoming links?
If you are running ads,
or have listings in sites
like tourism or
Chamber sites, you
should add a UTM tag
to every incoming link

23. What is a UTM?
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module.
A UTM code is what you will often see after a link,
with information about where the traffic came from.
https://business.com?utm_source=brandhound&utm
_medium=display&utm_campaign=spring_specials&u
tm_content=wine

24. How do I create a UTM?
Create and organize your own UTMs, and keep track of them on a
spreadsheet. Share them with ad vendors and publishers.
Google provides a handy tool to build UTMs.
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Adwords campaigns create their own UTMs automatically

25. Fill in the form…

26. UTMs – Copy the link

27. See the data on your site

28. What makes your property unique?

29. Highlight the stories that your
property or business unique
History?
Price?
Location?
Amenities?
Service?
Architecture?
Tell your story…

30. Use big, beautiful images to create a
sense of place

31. Tantalize the senses…

32. Capture memorable moments

33. Appeal to the imagination…

34. Speak to what’s unique
about your business

35. Help the user do what she came to do

36. Avoid out-of-date technology

37. Minimize Clutter. Avoid “Busy”
There’s just way
too much going on
here.

38. Don’t make visitors jump
through hoops!
Post contact info and hours
prominently
• Phone
• Email
• Address
• Hours
Keep forms short and sweet

39. Don’t make visitors jump
through hoops!
Please reconsider that annoying age gate…

40. Reconsider that annoying age gate
"There is no law or regulation per se that requires age
verification," Marvin Cable, who teaches internet law and policy
for the University of Massachusetts and is a policy expert in the
field of drug and alcohol law.
Additionally, forcing someone to disclose their age or birthday to
use a site opens another can of worms: the potential for
computer fraud.
-Huffington Post

41. Do you have fresh local content?

42. Original local content is
one of the most
important things you can
do to improve search
rankings and customer
engagement
• Local events
• Winery guides
• Things to do
• Tell your story with a
blog
• Photos
Do you have fresh local content?

43. Showcase local events and attractions

44. Event listings are gold for SEO

45. Roger Coryell
(707) 892-3953
roger@brandhound.com
Find this deck at:
https://brandhound.com/website
Questions?
Thank you.