Why do I need to do this?

Analysing your website traffic is beneficial for a handful of reasons. It will tell you who visited your website, how they arrived and which web pages they looked at (and for how long).

And with this information, you can learn more about your audience, improve weak areas of your website, identify your most engaging content and more – helping you to further increase traffic and drive more direct bookings.

But don’t fret if you’re a beginner. Down below is everything you need to give it a go.

Understanding Website Metrics

Before you set up an analytics tool on your website, it’s important to understand a few of the key metrics to look at.

Traffic

Traffic is an “umbrella” metric which, of course, shows how much overall traffic your website is getting. It goes without saying that you’ll want to see this data on a constant rise.

Users, Sessions, Pageviews

Users are the number of website visitors. Sessions are the duration of a user’s visit. And page views are the total number of visits (or clicks) a user makes to any given web page. Aside from general traffic, these metrics represent visitor engagement.

Conversion Rate

When a user completes an action that you want them to take, such as subscribing to your email list or making a booking, that’s a conversion. The higher your conversion rate, the better!

Bounce Rate

When a user visits your website and leaves within a short time, it's known as a bounce. In general, a high bounce rate means your website isn’t performing too well.

Google Analytics

Now that you know a few important metrics, here’s how you can set up analytics on your hotel website.

Google Analytics is the most popular website analytics tool around. It’s free and also ideal for hoteliers looking to analyse website traffic for the first time.

To set it up, it’s a matter of creating a Google Analytics account, adding a property (your website) from the Admin page, clicking data stream, then copying and pasting the Analytics tag (a small piece of code) into the HTML of any web page you want to analyse.

From the Admin page, you will be able to see the above metrics and more.

Analyse Your Website to Improve Your Website

Once you’ve set an analytics tool like Google Analytics, you can then start to monitor your website’s performance.

You can check your metrics daily or weekly, create goals or collect your data in spreadsheets, making note of your user demographics, underperforming web pages, bounce rates, conversions and more.

The main takeaway here is that once you know your website’s weak points, you can then take the right steps to adjust and improve them.

Do you analyse your hotel’s website traffic? Let us know in the comments below!

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Cutting-edge website design is a solid marketing investment for your hotel – a dedicated space to sell your guest experience through visually striking media and compelling written content that’s been carefully designed around your brand to increase customer demand and convert more visitors into guests.

Whether you have an active website or you're a hotelier looking to get started, here are seven things your hotel website must deliver in 2020.

Speed

Quick loading times are important when considering increasingly fast internet speeds and the impatience we have as a result of this standard.

As a guide, a good-quality website will load in under 3 seconds – if your web pages are taking three or four times this amount, you risk losing a potential booking. Speed and responsiveness offer the best first impression, indicative of a website that has been professionally built while reducing the risk of visitor frustration.

User-Friendly Layout

How easy is it to navigate your website and all the information it contains about your hotel?

Likewise with speed, a cluttered, complicated website that’s confusing to navigate has a good chance of leaving visitors frustrated. A straightforward navigation menu should be at the centre of your website experience, laying out what your hotel has to offer and where to go for the information your customers will be eager to find out.

Call to Action

The main purpose of your hotel's website should be to drive bookings, so making sure that it takes an effective CTA approach is essential.

From the homepage, your customers should get the impression that they have arrived at the precise place to book – both smoothly and securely – through attractive written content and enticing web design. Along with tactically placed links to your hotel’s bookings system, all your content must be expertly stylised in a way that incentivises customers into taking action.

High-Quality Media

High-quality media should be present throughout your website, displaying the most eye-catching aspects of your hotel to stimulate, excite and offer a taste of the experience your hotel provides.

As your hotel and location have a unique experience to sell, you don’t want poorly captured photos underselling what that experience entails – hiring a professional photographer is absolutely worth your while, with more media formats to consider if you want to take your website to the next level, such as video content and interactive virtual tours.

Branding

Does your website reflect the guest experience, location and customer service your hotel has to offer?

Your website should be representative of your brand, evoking a sense of trust and importance from the second visitors view your homepage. When it comes to overall website design, shapes, colours, fonts and textual content all have a significant impact on mood – and these, utilised effectively, will assert your hotel’s authenticity as a brand.

Search Engine Optimisation

An impressive website doesn’t serve its purpose if it’s not generating traffic. This is where search engine optimisation steps in: a marketing strategy that will ensure your website reaches its desired audience.

SEO content is key to making your website search engine friendly, which will boost website traffic and give you an edge over competitors. Not only should your website’s written content be compelling, but professionally formatted and optimised to meet the ever-changing criteria of the SERPs.

Responsive Web Design

With today’s choice of smartphones, tablets and internet browsers, it goes without saying that you’ll want your hotel website to work flawlessly across all platforms.

You could be drastically limiting your reach if your website isn’t optimised for the latest devices. Responsive website design adapts your website to be thumb-friendly and, if utilised optimally, guarantees that all the essential features of your website are integrated into an intuitive, scaled-down layout that is fully functional and attractive on any device.

Have Your Website Evaluated for Free with eTourism

Want to know how your hotel website holds up in 2020?

Get a free website evaluation with eTourism – our expert team can carry out a professional, to-the-point website evaluation against current industry standards, giving you an invaluable insight into its performance, design and marketing conversion, as well as any key areas where it might be letting your business down.

Request now – it’s free and requires no obligation.

Find out more by just visiting eTourism Free Website Evaluation.

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Taking this into account, if your hotel’s website doesn’t render seamlessly when travel shoppers make that tap on Google, you can be certain that that potential customer – given how quickly websites and apps on the whole are expected to function in 2019 – will go somewhere else, which results in a lost booking, and subsequently a missed chance to strike up a loyal relationship with a guest that may have returned multiple times for what your business has to offer.

Despite your hotel being an attractive choice initially, if it’s not marketed in a way that utilises the advantages of responsive website design, you may well be losing more than half of your customer base who use tablets and phones as their means to navigate online.

Your Website Without Responsive Website Design

You’re certain to remember a past moment when you were browsing the internet on your phone or tablet, only to find that the particular website you wanted to visit rendered dismally on your device: the images were too big to see what they were, sentences were unreadable in their entirety, and you had to inconveniently scroll sideways, even diagonally, to navigate your way across a seemingly endless page.

You remember it because it was frustrating. And you made the conscious decision to either never visit that website again or to return in future when you had access to a desktop or laptop. Now however, with the powerful capabilities of tablets and mobiles today, more people rely habitually on such devices, with some not even requiring a desktop or laptop at home.

This is why your hotel’s website needs responsive website design: an industry-expected practice which guarantees that your website – and everything you want visitors to see – is displayed at the tap of a finger, no matter which device and what dimension the screen is.

Your Website With Responsive Website Design

By implementing responsive website design on your website, you deliver a user-friendly experience on any device that pushes your hotel’s selling points, drives bookings, and leaves a lasting impression on visitors who will remember your website’s ease of functionality the next time they go accommodation shopping.

Responsive website design is your website made attractive across the ever-growing range of portable devices, and a crucial implementation in an especially exciting age of digital marketing. Potential customers will visit your website to find that your forefront image sends the aesthetic message it’s supposed to, what your hotel offers is readable from the get-go, and that other important areas of your website are accessible in just one or two taps.

Moreover, to make sure you’re implementing responsive website design effectively, ask yourself these key questions after viewing your website on a portable device:

• Are my website’s images cropped suitably and is the text of an immediately readable size?
• Are all areas of my website easy to navigate without having to scroll sideways?
• Does my website load quickly and leave aside sluggish Flash-based content?
• Can I see ALL the same information on my mobile, that I can see on my desktop?

Have any guests complimented you on how easy it was to use your hotel’s website? Let us know in the comments below!

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All good, right?

But is the platform really the best option out there for new website builds, or just a quick, cheap fix for those looking to get their site up and running?

Here are 8 reasons we think you should think twice before choosing WordPress for your hotel’s new website and consider iLaunch, our sleek, powerful and infinitely customisable CMS instead!

1. WordPress was created with blogging, not ecommerce in mind

Although WordPress has evolved somewhat overtime to keep pace with the changing face of the internet, it was originally created as a blogging platform, not as a complete content management system. It found popularity in a time when there was very little choice for small business owners who wanted to publish content for their online audience and played an integral role in the rise of blogging in the early days of the web.

But while WordPress remains a useful blogging tool, it lacks the features, functions and flexibility needed to create a truly great ecommerce site. This is particularly true when it comes to the ‘behind the scenes’ administration areas of a WordPress site which offer very limited options in terms of managing content, page layouts and menus.

iLaunch, in comparison, has been designed with a full range of features and functionality to help you manage, update and customise every piece of content you add to your website – from your latest blog post to your new photo gallery or video tour showing off your recent refurbishment project.

2. Security Risks

Because the platform only offers limited functionality, most WordPress site owners install a variety of plugins to enable extra functions on their website. These third party themes and plugins can come with a myriad of security risks, spam links and malware files, and what’s worse, you probably won’t even know about them until it’s too late.

At eTourism, we constantly monitor our client’s websites to keep them secure around the clock. System and security updates are automatically rolled out free of charge as part of the iLaunch website hosting plan and your website is automatically backed up at the end of each day.

3. No Automatic Upgrades

As you’ll be aware if you’ve ever used the platform, WordPress regularly releases upgrades to implement new features or address security vulnerabilities. However, these upgrades are only rolled out automatically to users who pay for the company’s cloud platform, for everyone else; upgrading involves a complicated process of backing up your database and wordpress files and deactivating various plugins before running the install process.

With iLaunch, new features and fixes are rolled out regularly and automatically with no downtime – so no lost bookings.

4. Want Control of Your SEO? Bespoke Design is Best

SEO is changing all the time, and it’s important that your website is easily adaptable to meet the needs of every new algorithm change Google rolls out. Bespoke websites give you this flexibility, but the same can not be said of sites built through WordPress. Although WordPress plugins are available to help website owners optimise their sites, if you want close control of your SEO, a professionally built website is your best bet.

All aspects of the iLaunch CMS have been developed with the latest SEO best practices in mind. This ensures your website can be indexed by the search engines and rank highly in the results pages – without plugins.

5. User Experience May Suffer

Speaking of SEO, Google rewards websites that provide a great user experience with higher search rankings. Central to a great user experience is page load speed, and since WordPress sites invariably contain multiple plugins, this can slow your whole site down, leading to frustration among your guests and lower search rankings.

6. Your Website Won’t be Original

Originality of design is an area where a bespoke website will always come out on top. In an online world full of hotels trying to make their mark and win the attention of online travellers, a WordPress site won’t get you noticed. A professionally built website, carefully designed and constructed with the needs of your unique audience in mind has a far better chance.

7. The iLaunch Assets Library Makes Managing Your Content Easy

The iLaunch Assets library has been designed to make managing your content as simple as possible. You can upload a video, image or piece of text content once and reuse it in multiple places, while resizing, thumbnails and caching is automatically taken care of. Whatever you’re uploading, your content will be displayed with the correct dimensions, with no plugins or extra coding needed!

8. iLaunch Helps Your Website Grow With Your Business

Your website should be flexible enough to grow and evolve as your business does. With WordPress, every time you want a new feature, you have to add a new third party plugin, which may or may not communicate with the rest of your website and may or may not come with security risks.

iLaunch comes with an array of ready built modules that work straight out of the box, including:

• Blogs
• Newsletters
• Galleries
• Dynamic Animated Banners
• Enquiries Management
• Members Area
• Google Maps and Google Analytics integration
• Content Management
• Youtube and Vimeo integration

We can also custom-build functionality into iLaunch for you, so you have exactly the CMS you need to meet the changing demands of your business.

What do you think? Have we persuaded you of the pitfalls of WordPress? Let us know in the comments below!

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As you begin to weigh up your options, it can be tempting to pick the company with the lowest price tag, or better yet, one of the many free website templates or ‘DIY’ website solutions available online. But while a free or ultra affordable website may seem like a great idea right now, taking the cheapest option may cost you, and your booking rates, in the long run. Here’s 4 reasons why:

Search Ranking Implications

There are a number of reasons why website templates and SEO don’t go hand in hand. Firstly, a lot of these sites undermine a fundamental pillar of good search engine optimisation by using global title tags instead of unique title tags and meta descriptions for each page of your website. If you’re unable to change the title tags to include your hotel’s keywords, you limit the number of relevant keywords on your site. This makes it more difficult for the search engines to crawl and identify your pages, which means bad news for your search ranking.

Then there’s the fact that when a website has been made using a pre-made template, you don’t know for sure if it has been properly coded. If it hasn’t, the search engines will struggle to read your website which will also impact your search rankings.

The last point to consider is that if you opt for one of these DIY website projects, you’ll lose any SEO ground you’ve gained on your previous website and be back to square one in your ongoing efforts to rank highly in the SERPs.

Your Website Won’t Be Unique To Your Business

When you use a template, you get a generic design that could be suitable for any number of businesses. Sure, there might be a wide range of industry specific colours and layouts to choose from, but what you don’t get, is a website put together with your business’s USP in mind. Is your hotel’s target demographic families? If so, a good website design might include several prominent high quality photos showing families with young children enjoying themselves on the beach. Likewise, the text on your website should draw attention to all the ways your property and location is great for families – something you might not get with the often generic text supplied with templates.

Simply put: your website should differentiate your business from your competitors and help you stand out from the crowd. Professional website design is highly flexible and can be customised to suit the unique needs and aims of your property. If you opt for a template, you know there are other sites out there, perhaps even lots of sites, with a similar if not identical design.

Poor Analytics

Another problem with these sites is that they are often not supported by Google Analytics, one of the most important tools for understanding the traffic that lands on your website. Even if you secure a good ranking in the SERPs, without Analytics, you won’t be able to understand how this high position relates to website visitors, or what your guests do once they land on your website. Without this data, it’s hard to identify and plan the changes you need to incorporate to make your website even more successful.

Low Quality Design

The last risk is perhaps the most obvious. When you get a website built ultra cheaply, you run the risk of it looking…well, cheap. As a rule, professional, attractive websites will cost more. You may not think your guests are discerning enough to notice the difference, but today’s online travellers shop around and compare multiple properties before booking. If your website doesn’t look professional and perform optimally, they’ll notice, and they’ll be less likely to trust you, and less likely to part with their money. With this in mind, is it really worth sacrificing quality for price? How much would you trust Amazon if their website looked like it was put together cheaply in less than an hour?
 

What do you think about free website templates? Have you ever been tempted by a cheap website solution? Let us know in the comments below!

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1. It’s probably the oldest page on your site (and has therefore gathered the most inbound links and

2. Its URL is (or should be) heavily promoted across all your marketing channels both on and offline.

For most of your guests, your homepage is the ‘front door’ that leads to them finding out more about your resort, and that makes getting it right one of the most important tasks in online marketing.

A great homepage is straight-forward to use, great to look at and makes it easy for a visitor to find the information they’re looking for. It converts traffic into mailing list subscribers, Facebook fans and paying guests. And it does it all with minimal input from you.

No matter how long you’ve had your property’s website; it’s never too late to make it better. Take a look at 5 of the most common features found on the best homepages. Does your site’s measure up?

1) A Clear Value Proposition

Before anything else, an effective homepage needs to clearly lay out your property’s value proposition. This lets your visitors know exactly what you’re offering, and even more crucially, why they should care enough to stick around long enough to find out more.

A value proposition isn’t a slogan or a catchphrase; it’s exactly what it sounds like: a promise of value to be delivered. It tells your ideal guests, in a nutshell, why they should book with you over your competitors.

The more elements you can incorporate into your homepage that support your resort’s value proposition, the more effective it becomes at driving bookings.

2) Reader-Focused Content

The best web copy is written with the end reader in mind. By anticipating the typical questions a potential guest visiting your site will have, and directly addressing these questions in the content on your homepage, your value proposition shines through more clearly and your messaging is far more powerful.

3) Straight-Forward Navigation

A website’s navigation system adds further strength to the value proposition by guiding visitors to the pages they need to visit to find out more. It should be easy for visitors to see in a glance where they need to go next to have their questions answered in more detail. Without well designed navigation, your value proposition quickly loses power and clarity.

4) Effective Calls-to-Action

Your guests tend to land on your website because they want to do something- even if they’re not quite sure what it is yet. It’s up to your homepage to guide visitors to take the next step in their travel planning/research or booking process. Compelling calls-to-action help them do just that.

5) Intelligent Design

Finally, it’s time to talk about aesthetics. A great homepage should have elegant, eye-catching design to complement its carefully thought-out content. Intelligent design encompasses everything from graphic elements to leading the visitor’s eye to the most important areas of the page, choosing font type and everything in between. Get it right and your visitors are more likely to want to engage with your site further.

What do you think makes a great homepage? Let us know in the comments below!

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1. Minimise Loading Time

A recent Gomez study revealed that the average online consumer now expects a web page to load within 2 seconds, and that as many as 40% will abandon the page after three seconds if it fails to do so. 

Although images, scripts and multimedia enhance your website, they also slow down its loading time, which in this age of instant gratification, could translate to lost visitors.   

One way to combat this is by using free online tools such as Page Speed and YSlow to test the loading times of all the images and multimedia you want to include on your site. You can also downsize large, high-resolution images before uploading them to your website to cut loading time without compromising on quality. 

2. Keep your Design Simple 

Catch the eye of your internet users –without confusing them- using bold, high quality images and a clean, simple design. Keep your website’s structure simple and organised so visitors can easily find the information they’re looking for and don’t be afraid to embrace white space! 

3. Provide Easy to Read, Easy to Understand Content 

Web visitors aren’t prepared to read a thesis to get to grips with the most important information on your site, so make sure your content is extremely clear and to the point. Hold people’s attention by conveying the most information you can in the least amount of words possible, use reader-focused language such as “you” and “your” and make sure your tone is suitable for your guests. 

4. Create a Consistent Experience

This means making sure the path that leads to your site is logical. If someone has landed on your site after clicking a search engine result, PPC ad, or banner ad, they’re expecting to see what the description stated. For instance, if someone clicks on a banner ad advertising budget Gold Coast accommodation, they need to see budget Gold Coast accommodation straight away on the ad’s corresponding landing page. If the message of your ad and landing page are not consistent, you could lose the visitor’s trust, and a potential booking. 

5. Show Your Credibility 

It goes without saying that if a visitor doubts the security of your site; you have little choice of getting them to part with their cash. Keep people on your site by building trust and credibility through guest testimonials, a comprehensive privacy policy and privacy seals. 

6. Simplify the Next Step

Once you’ve got a visitor on your site, you don’t want them to have to think too much about what they have to do next. Make sure you include a clear, clickable call to action to let your visitors know how to take the next step and make a booking.  

Does your hotel’s website pass the blink test?