Conversions on your travel website can mean a couple of things – it could be that you want people to sign up for a newsletter or send a request through for a quotation. More often than not though, the actionable response you are looking for is for travelers to book or purchase your product.
Considering that the topic of conversions regularly pops up for marketers, we thought to put together some tips to help you identify possible areas of improvement and subsequently streamline the online experience that travelers have with your business so as to convert the browsers into bookings.
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Send out a feedback request form, or set up a survey for your customers to complete that will give you insights on how they feel about your business and the products you offer.
Structure the form so that the responses you receive will help to pinpoint the good and the bad. Learning what makes your customers come back to you is something which you can highlight even more on your website. In the same token, you will also be able to identify and tackle any issues uncovered that have an effect on your online sales conversion rate.
With this in mind, use a survey format survey that utilizes open-ended questions to encourage written feedback. While quantitative surveys are a handy way to crunch numbers, the valuable input comes from your customers giving real considered feedback.
Your travel business no doubt has something unique to offer your clients. You know what it is that sets you above the rest, but are you emphasizing this enough on your website? Let potential clients know why they are better off buying from you and highlight those points where they can be seen.
In working with Sunshine.co.uk, Conversion Rate Experts found their client was not prominently highlighting their proven strong points on their website, points which were supported by customer feedback. By better communicating their strengths where they could be seen, Conversion Rate Experts increased Sunshine.co.uk's conversion rate.
Make sure that your Call To Action (CTA) buttons are visible and placed where they will be seen. Use a pop-up window to encourage your website visitors to sign up for your newsletter. That being said, you need to avoid being spammy and scaring them away here – make the sign up opt-in rather than mandatory.
If you use Book Now or Get A Quote CTA's then make sure they are available on every page that people navigate. This way you will increase website conversions by making it easier to take the next booking step.
When travelers use their email address to sign up for a free account or newsletter, you get the opportunity to use it for email marketing to increase website conversions.
Travelers see this to their benefit too, as accessing your business online via an account gives them a more personalized user experience. Simple things like being able to save details such as your name, address, birth date, and passport number so that the process does not have to be repeated every single time is a convenient time saver.
Travel packages usually involve a number of add-ons. Think of travel insurance, airport collections, inclusive meals etc. To increase conversions online be sure to upsell or cross sell complimentary products to your clients.
Ultimately it is more convenient for travelers to secure a good deal from a single company as this means they have one point of contact. It also saves them hours of shopping around. Therefore, by having the add-ons available, you increase your chances of converting to sales.
As more travelers are turning to mobile and last minute bookings are becoming more prevalent, it is important to make sure that your website fully accommodates these functions. If it doesn’t then you are likely to lose the business to another that does.
Digital experimentation platform Optimizely published a case study which shows how Hot Wire, an Expedia Inc company, refined and updated the look of their car rental booking site for mobile in an experiment to see if it increased conversions.
The experiment was successful and the newly optimized mobile site was a winner for the company, expanding their user base to travelers on the go.
While you know exactly where to look for things on your website, your clients might not. It is therefore important that everything is made simple from the time that customers land on your homepage to the point where they finalize their booking.
This means it should be usability tested to make sure that clients are getting a user-friendly experience when browsing it. It is singularly the biggest feature you can improve to increase website conversions.
Your Home Page is where you welcome clients to your business online. Keeping things simple and clear-cut will make the page easier to navigate.
For online booking sites that offer real-time bookings, make sure that your search parameters are easy to locate and understand as this is where conversions take place.
In another case study by Optimizely, they undertook to improve Smarter Travel’s landing page which was not seeing sales conversions. They optimized different features on the website such as page headline, partner logos, background images etc. The result was a double in revenue per visitor landing on the page.
An additional measure that real-time booking sites can try is to use a progress bar. The progress bar helps increase conversions on your website by giving your clients a view of the steps they have already taken and still need to take in order to complete a booking.
The idea here is to provide travelers with a tool that measures their progress as it is easy to be put off if a process is seemingly endless. Additionally, give travelers the option to save their progress as they go along. This way if they have to unexpectedly abandon cart they will be able to pick up where they left off when they are ready to.
Both your website usability and home page navigation can be improved by A/B testing (also known as split testing). Using this concept, you devise alternative versions of your control page and roll them out to your users at random to see how the variation page performs in comparison to the control.
Essentially you can try different buttons, headline placement, emphasize different features, play with the format etc to see which page performs the best to increase website conversions. Once you know which variation is producing the most sales, you can roll it out to all of your users to increase website conversions.