So, you’ve got your hotel website up.
You’ve done all the blistering hard work behind getting visitors to your site.
Maybe you’ve spent time and money on SEM (search engine marketing), paid ads or content marketing.
The problem is, expecting more business from a higher visitor count is like expecting to win the lottery…there’s a slim chance it might happen, but it’s highly unlikely.
So what do you do after you’ve got enough visitors?
Easy: focus on turning more leads into customers with one of the best conversion tools around… landing pages.
When done right, landing pages supercharge the conversions of your hotel site because they:
Instantly scoop up more leads: Companies tend to direct traffic from their email, content and social media to their homepages. This can still lead to conversions, but isn’t as effective as using landing pages. Directing traffic to landing pages means you capture more leads while they’re boiling with interest and desire.
Directly impact your business goals: Your goal could be to get people to search for something, subscribe to a newsletter, or to book a room in your hotel. Whatever it is, by attracting and directing your prospect’s attention to a landing page that focuses on a specific action, you shoot up your chances of success.
Provide useful insights about your audience: Landing pages allow you to collect information about your customers – through their booking details and/or enquiry forms.
Can be tested for maximum ROI: There’s no guess work with landing pages. It’s raw, all you can eat data. Tools like Google Analytics allow you to test the effectiveness of your campaigns. Which means you’ll know when your conversions are spiking or plummeting, and you’ll know why.
Now, you know that landing pages are awesome, but how do you go about creating them in a way that increases your conversions and snags more bookings?
That’s what I’ll be covering in today’s post.
Let’s go.
Studies reveal that the typical consumer is exposed to a whopping 5,000 advertisements a day.
If we want to convince, motivate and sell, it’s an absolute must that we cut through the clutter.
The best way to do this is to have a killer headline that quickly locks your prospect’s attention. If your prospect doesn’t make it past your headline, there’s no way he’s going to hit to your “book now” button.
Advertising legend David Ogilvy phrased this best when he said,
“Unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90% percent of your money”
And in case you aren’t convinced, a case study by contentverve.com revealed a huge 38.46% increase in conversions by simply tweaking a weak headline into a strong one.
So how do you go about creating headlines that convert?
We could spend hours dissecting high converting headlines, but there are two must-haves for beefing up the stopping power of any headline.
If your headline does the two things above, you’re doing good.
Above is a great headline example from the webprofits.com’s landing page.
It’s straightforward, easy to read, and most importantly, it offers a mouthwatering benefit to its audience.
For more ways to power up your headlines, check out this infographic from Kissmetrics.
Everything on your landing page is designed to get people to do one thing…
Click on your call to action (or booking button).
Which is why the next step towards boosting your hotel landing page conversions is to ensure that your call to action button stands out.
Take a look at the landing page for the Perivolas resort below.
Can you spot what’s wrong with the call to action for the resort?
Fortunately, it’s easy to make your call to action more clickable. You can do any of the following…
Some possible CTA copy suggestions are:
To find your optimum CTA button, start testing. Test different sizes, colours and copy. When you hit a nerve, you’ll know, because simple tweaks will cause big conversion spikes.
Let’s imagine that a prospect has just loaded up your hotel landing page.
While he’s spending precious seconds browsing the page, what do you think he cares about the most?
He might not care about your hotel. He might not care about how fancy you are. He might not care that you have a 5 star rating…
What he does care about though, is how those features of your hotel will benefit him.
That’s why it’s crucial that you use your landing page to talk about how your hotel can benefit your prospect.
Take a look at this landing page from Golden Sands.
It does a good job of showing how the features of its resort benefit potential guests.
One simple way to ensure that your landing page is more benefit driven, is to use the “so what?” test.
All you do is read through any statements or features about your hotel and ask “so what?”
Let’s say your hotel landing page makes the following statements:
Here’s how they become more benefit driven and enticing with the “so what?” test:
Start by thinking about your visitor’s needs and how you meet them, then carry on from there.
If you’re not using social proof on your hotel landing pages, you’re missing out. Big time.
Social proof is extremely effective because as humans:
People will doubt the claims you make about your hotel, but they’re more inclined to believe an honest testimonial from someone who has slept, ate, relaxed and lived in it.
Reviews and testimonials are powerful ways to use social proof on your hotel landing page. In 2014, a consumer study by BrightLocal.com showed that:
Here’s an example of a strong hotel landing page with a great testimonial:
Now compare the testimonial above to saying something like…
“We offer great value for money in comparison to other resorts, and you will always want to come back.”
Which one seems more believable and honest?
The testimonial, right? This is because it uses social proof to overcome the natural objections we have when investing into something.
To get testimonials for your landing page, start by asking previous guests. You can even get more testimonials by offering small discounts on items at your hotel in exchange for some positive, honest words.
Boosting your hotel business doesn’t have to be a chore. By focusing on converting more leads into customers with optimised landing pages, you can instantly attract more bookings and make your hotel stand out.
Now when it comes to creating killer landing pages, you have two options. You can go the DIY route and do it by yourself, or you can hire experienced hotel website design experts to save you time and effort.