The travel industry came to a halt when the COVID-19 pandemic hit many parts of the world, which triggered all sort of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and in our case, the Movement Control Order (MCO). Hotels, in particular, are seeing less or close to no bookings, leaving them with not much to do. As things are slowing down, working on internal assets such as improving website design or work on improving your branding perception is the best thing you can do.
The silver lining behind this inactivity is the opportunity to tinker with your web design without affecting your user experience and overall operations. Since the opportunity has presented itself, there’s nothing stopping your team from making the best hotel website design there is.
We’d love to help you with your cause. So, here are the 6 website design tips from a creative agency in Malaysia, which we recommend you to take up and bring your hotel’s web design game to the next level:
High-Definition Scenic Photos
When people travel, hotels are where they spent most of their time in, be it asleep, relaxing or showering. Enjoying a killer view as they relax in your luxurious rooms are a great plus point for any hotel.
In order to sell this concept, you need great (scratch that) breathtaking imagery of the views. We’re referring to incorporating high-definition landscape photographs on your web design, which helps users skip the imagination process and go straight into envisioning themselves in the backdrop.
Do take note of the image sizes and the resulting loading speed of your website. You don’t want to be losing customers who’re fed up with waiting for the site to load and losing your search engine rankings from high bounce rates.
Unique Selling Points (USPs) At Landing Page
There’re a dozen hotel chains and even more boutique hotels all around the world, which means consumers are spoiled for choices when it comes to picking a room to rest for a vacation, business trip or staycation.
To stand out from the crowded hotel industry, your website design needs to showcase your USPs of what makes your hotel unique and why your target audience should reserve a room at your place as opposed to your horde of competitors.
Whether it’s the location, amenities, facilities, cleanliness or even supreme customer service, you need to identify the differentiating factor for your hotel and your brand identity. If you’re struggling in this arena, perhaps a helping hand from a branding agency in Malaysia to define and strengthen your brand with a campaign could do the trick.
Eye-Catching & Smart Call-To-Actions
You’ve tugged their heartstrings with hi-resolution scenic visuals and you’ve convinced them to book a room at your marvellous hotel. Now what? They need to know where to go next and what to click on.
That’s where your Call-To-Action (CTAs) come into play. There’re different types of CTAs you can employ and they each serve different purposes in converting your target audience on their respective journeys.
Whichever you decide to employ, the idea is to position them in an area clearly visible to the users and use contrasting colours to will catch their attention. Bonus points if you can make the copywriting witty and relatable to your hotel.
Straightforward Booking User Journey
Nothing turns customers away more than having to jump through burning hoops just to part with your money, albeit to pay for a specific product. Hence, planning a straightforward user journey for your booking process is more important than you think.
Ideally, your users should achieve their objectives within 3 pages so you should keep that in mind as you map out the user journey for your website. Keep the necessary fields within as little pages as possible, and remove all the excess marketing pop-ups and unnecessary steps.
The faster you can get them through the booking process, the better chance of them converting from potential leads to actual customers. (And also the faster you can get the payments from them, cha-ching!)
Variety of Payment Options
Speaking of payments, the development of eCommerce technology has paved the way for a wide variety of online payment options. You’ve got PayPal, ApplePay, GooglePay, Stripe and even Internet Banking these days.
There’s much to be said about Malaysia’s eCommerce payment trends but at the end of the day, the best practice is to include as many options as possible for your users. Although the transactional fees can be a pinch, there’s no rational reason for stopping potential customers from paying in their preferred payment option.
After all, they’re already this close to conversion, so why let something as negligible as a lack of payment option get in the way? As much as possible, incorporate them all and let your customers decide how they want to pay you. (;
Mobile-Responsive Website Design
More than half of Malaysia’s population own a smartphone, which is a good indicator of the preferred device usage for the time to come. While many users still rely on laptops to carry out financial transactions, that trend will change as more and more young individuals enter the workforce.
That doesn’t mean you have to build a mobile website specifically to cater to them. You just got to rely on developing a responsive web design that will adapt according to the screen it’s displayed on.
Responsive web design is optimized for user experience, providing a seamless transition from screen to screen and delivering the same unique experience to the users regardless of which device they’re on. It works by resizing and adjusting the elements within the website based on the dimensions of the screen.
A Website Design Company For Any Industry
If you happen to take up our advice in revamping your website during this lull period, why not give us a ring and we’ll take it from there.
We’ve helped clients from all kinds of industries such as shipping, pharmaceutical and even adult diapers. It’s pretty clear that our expertise transcends industries and we’re confident of delivering the website design that you need. As you can see from our tips, you know that we’ll follow the best practices and utilise our experience in developing a website to your liking.
