The prominence of mobile hasn’t been a secret for quite some time now. As its importance, use, and presence grows consistently, making it our best friend, side kick, number 1 confidante – you, as a hotelier, need to consider its magnitude very seriously when you are reviewing your website.
With bookings beginning to creep up, it’s now as important as ever to ensure your website works seamlessly on mobile so you don’t lose potential bookers due to a bad user experience. We’ve preached this before – but no harm in a refresher for the time that’s in it!
Our data is taken as an average across all Net Affinity clients FYI.
Ensure your website & booking engine are fully responsive
What does “responsive” mean? It means that the page uses the same URL and code on every device, but the display will adjust to the device’s screen size. Responsive web design offers a standardised user experience across all platforms and decreases download time.
Without a responsive web design, mobile browsers will unsuccessfully try to make the content appear clearer by increasing font sizes or showing content that fits within the screen.
As mobile continues to grow rapidly as a booking platform, there’s really no other option other than to ensure your booking engine works seamlessly on mobile. Here’s how to choose the perfect booking engine that will deliver!
Test your existing website using Google’s mobile-friendly test to see how it does!
Providing a great UX experience
Mobile users are very goal oriented. They want a responsive website so they can get things done quickly with zero confusion.
Tips for improving your mobile UX
Call to Action (CTA)
A “call to action” is a phrase that’s used to tell your user exactly what action to take and how to take it.
The main purposes of a CTA are to:
What builds a strong CTA that convinces people to act?
Keep your forms short and sweet
When it comes to your forms, you don’t want them to be any longer than they need to be. Include only the necessary fields and remove anything you don’t need. It’s been found that as the number of form fields increases, conversion rates do decrease.
Avoid ALL unnecessary steps
69% of people will abandon a site or an app because there are too many steps to purchase! So try to reduce the amount of steps your customer has to take, and focus on displaying your content in the most rational way. As you are probably more than aware of by now, too much choice can kill conversions.
Do a check of the user journey yourself – how many steps does the process take? Think logically, what can be removed?
Avoid distractions!
Unsurprisingly, the pop up ad is the most hated advertisement tactic on mobile. And it’s a terrible distraction! You don’t need any barriers between you and your guest’s booking, so avoid the likes of:
Keep your navigation super easy and intuitive
It’s important to remember to keep the experience as intuitive as possible. Remember things like making sure the logos in your booking engine and on your website are hyper-linked so it’s super easy for users to return to your homepage.
If you need to link off to any external pages, make sure they open up on a new tab, and avoid PDFs and docs. Why?
Keep your payments mobile-friendly
Avoid asking for deposits if you can – this will put people off. Make it clear that the only reason you’re collecting CC details is just to secure the booking and your guest won’t be charged unnecessarily if they’ve booked a deal where they can pay upon arrival. Importantly, inform your guests of your flexible cancellation policy! This is especially key now, when guests will still be nervous and apprehensively travelling for the first time post-Covid.
Help them find you!
Give your guests easy access to your address details by using Google’s handy tools.
More Location Campaigns, Google My Business and Google Hotel Ads here!
