Making sure your hotel website is mobile-friendly is essential to turning visitors into bookings. Traditional websites often cause images to look stretched or pinched and text to be hard to read on smartphones.
Responsive web design offers an effective solution to this dilemma, providing content to users across mobile phones, tablets and desktop computers from one site.
Increased Conversion Rates
Since smartphones are becoming ubiquitous, more people than ever are searching online for travel accommodations like hotels. As a result, it is increasingly essential for hotel websites to be mobile-friendly and easy to navigate; otherwise potential guests could simply switch over to one of your competitors who offer sites optimized specifically for their device of choice.
Responsive web design allows your hotel website to be accessible across any device or screen size or platform by adapting its content and layout according to each visitor’s screen resolution. This ensures your hotel site will look fantastic while functioning seamlessly across desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and phones.
Users accessing non-responsive hotel websites via mobile devices often experience various frustrating problems, including buttons that are too small for user thumbs and content that cannot be read on small screens. These issues can create unnecessary frustration among visitors, leading them to abandon your hotel altogether and book elsewhere instead.
Not to mention, many users will abandon a hotel website that takes too long to load on their smartphone or tablet if it takes too long to do so, impacting conversion rates significantly as potential guests struggle to book stays at your establishment if there are constantly delays and inconveniences along the way.
Responsive website designs provide a solution that ensures your hotel website can adapt to all devices without alienating potential customers. In the past, two distinct versions were often developed – one for desktop computers and another one specifically targeting mobile phones; this system resulted in duplicate content issues and search engine penalties.
Assuming you opt for a responsive design for your hotel website, this should solve all these problems and create one site optimized to all devices – not only improving user experience but also increasing conversion rates and increasing revenue for the hotel. Making the investment in responsive design one of the cost-effective and efficient strategies to increase conversions rates!
Better Search Engine Rankings
Responsive website designs are essential for hotels as they ensure optimal viewing experiences on mobile phones, tablets and desktop computers – providing guests with up-to-date information regarding amenities, rates and availability.
Google rewards hotels that use responsive web designs with higher search engine rankings; as it favors sites with uniform look and feel across devices. As a result, your hotel is more likely to appear on the first page of search results when relevant terms are searched if it utilizes responsive design compared to non-responsive competitors.
Mobile-Friendly Websites Matter for Google Search Rankings
Recently, comScore announced that smartphone and tablet traffic had overtaken desktop internet access for the first time ever, signaling to Google that its search engine algorithms must adjust accordingly to reflect mobile device usage. On April 21, 2014, they are rolling out an update that gives websites with responsive web designs an increased chance of showing up in mobile searches.
Responsive Website Designs Can Increase Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rankings of Your Hotel
PPC campaigns and OTA partnerships can bring in immediate demand, but their ongoing financial commitment is costly. SEO provides a more sustainable solution that will establish your hotel as an industry leader over time and save costs by optimizing website content so search engines recognize it as more relevant and user-friendly.
Responsive web designs will automatically adapt to fit the screen size of any device, making your site easily accessible for all visitors and helping prevent costly errors like duplicate content, link dilution and slow load times. A responsive site will also improve user experience and build your credibility as an authoritative source on hotel information – which in turn generates organic traffic which ultimately leads to more bookings and revenue for your hotel.
More Convenient Booking
Travelers using mobile devices to access hotel websites expect the ability to book stays without needing to return to their desktop computers; this ease of booking could make the difference between guests staying and booking with you or departing for another competitor with mobile-friendly pages.
Your hotel website shouldn’t frustrate visitors; with a responsive web design, this concern is eliminated by making sure guests can book their stay hassle-free regardless of their device.
Responsive hotel websites not only make your online reservation system user-friendly, but are also ADA compliant – this can be important for guests with disabilities that require them to use assistive technologies in order to navigate your website.
Responsive hotel websites will automatically adjust to suit visitors using various devices, making them invaluable assets to both guests and hotels. Providing them with one site that works optimally across devices can only serve to make things better!
Mobile website users often experience an unpleasant browsing experience when using standard websites on mobile devices, with navigation often becoming cumbersome to use with thumbs on small screens, content being too wide for their viewport, font sizes that are hard to read and pinched-in images becoming unbearable – leading many visitors to simply abandon your site in favor of competitors’.
Responsive hotel websites have been developed to reduce this type of hassle for their visitors and create a much more pleasant experience for your customers – which in turn increases conversion rates.
Since mobile devices are now the primary accessing mechanism for the Internet, responsive web design has become an indispensable necessity for hotels and travel businesses. Furthermore, Google’s announcement that mobile-friendliness will play a role in search engine rankings has cemented this importance even further.
More Traffic
As people’s mobile phones become ever-more accessible, it’s imperative that hotel websites are optimized to accommodate varying screen sizes when accessing the Internet. Responsive web design has quickly become the industry standard and ensures potential guests can view all the information they require on sites tailored specifically for their device.
Respondent web design offers one of the greatest financial advantages imaginable. No longer will you need to pay someone to manage separate desktop and mobile versions of your site; with responsive design you simply update once, and it automatically adjusts itself for every size device being used by a visitor.
Responsive design offers an enhanced user experience. Consider when you went online searching for hotels on mobile phones only to be met by desktop sites that didn’t fit their screen; your reaction would likely either be to pinch-and-zoom in an effort to view information that fits or leave altogether in frustration and find another property with mobile-friendly sites.
Responsive websites not only save you money and result in more direct bookings, they also enable you to collect more data about your guests – knowing where they come from, what they search for on your site and for how long – which can help improve marketing and guest services going forward.
If responsive web design is something new for 2013, make it a priority in 2013. As more consumers rely on mobile devices to search and book travel arrangements, having a responsive site that works across devices is absolutely crucial for staying competitive and drawing in new guests while increasing conversions.