DO’s and DONT’s of Home Page Layout   A website homepage is often the first – and occasionally the last – page of your website that visitors will set their eyes on. So make it count!   Here, we broadly outline the various DO’s and DONT’s of homepage design and layout:   DO define your target audience   Before the design stage commences, make sure to understand who you are targeting through your website. Consider several factors to consider include age, interests, and their particular wants and needs. You’ve likely already thought about these questions when branding your company in the first place, so ensure that your website reflects the brand itself.   DON’T forget the calls to action   Effective calls to action (CTAs) turn your visitors into customers. Take advantage of the visitors who have stuck around on your homepage by encouraging them to take further action. Think eye-catching buttons and phrases such as “enquire now”, “learn more” and the most obvious “book now”. Rather than obtrusive and annoying, effective calls to action are often subtle, and strategically placed, making clever use of negative space.   DO make a good first impression   …after all, you only get one chance to do so. An eye-tracking study conducted by the Missouri University of Science and Technology discovered that visitors spend an average of 2.6 seconds scanning any given webpage before settling in to focus on a specific area. What this means is that the time you have to capture and hold your audience’s attention is minimal. State your purpose in a clear and concise manner near the top of the back, ensuring it is easy to read and highly visible.   DON’T lose their interest   Once you have grabbed the attention of a user, you need to hotel their interest with both your branding and your layout. The eye-tracking study above also found that people view elements on a webpage in this order: logo, navigation, main image, and written content. This provides insight into the questions people ask and answer once they’re on your homepage for a sufficient amount of time. Make sure your visitors understand the message you are purveying, and you’ll be well on your way to a successful website.   DO plan for the future   If a website is designed and laid out well, easy to navigate, and featuring relevant content and vibrant images, first-time visitors are likely to turn into repeat visitors. Give them something new to see every time they return to your homepage by providing areas for dynamic content. For example, featuring latest blog posts, a stylish social media plugin that reveals your recent Facebook posts, Tweets, and Instagram images, or a regularly updated specials block.   To find out more about homepage design in the hospitality industry, or to learn more current digital marketing opportunities in South Africa, simply contact Hotel Revenue Management on +27 (0) 744 90 77 11 or jaco@hotel-revenue-manager.com. Image Credits:colorlib.com, Flickr/terryjohnson, colourlib.com, Flickr/jasonhowie  

5 Steps to Drive Direct Business A question regularly asked by marketers, hotel owners, and operators is: “How can I reduce my dependency on online travel agencies and drive more direct bookings?” Fortunately this process is heavily researched and well understood. Take a leaf from major OTA’s books and apply lessons learnt to your own direct online presence. In this blog post we provide five tips to help you shift away from OTAs and drive more direct business to your hotel: 1. Create Compelling Content with a Hint of Urgency In the digital world, website copy ought to be your best salesperson. It should convince guests that your hotel is the right choice for their holiday, and that your website is the best place to book their stay. Relevancy is key – your website copy exists to answer all their questions, simultaneously driving them towards a booking. Consult the staff at the front desk for the most frequently asked questions, and then look to answer these through the website content. What’s more, urgency in your copy is a valuable tool for encouraging guests to get off the fence, make a decision, and book their stay immediately. For example, “Only 2 rooms remaining for these dates!” 2. Update your Images There is a dead-simple reason sites like TripAdvisor and Booking.com are investing so much energy and effort into curating images these days: They drive bookings. As RockCheetah founder Robert Cole noted in a recent e-book: “the one universal truth is ‘pretty pictures sell hotels.”   Larger, bolder and more engaging imagery on websites, that is regularly updated, reveals fantastic results in the hospitality industry. Images not only answer your guests’ questions quickly and easily, but also help them envision exactly how much they’ll enjoy their stay.   3. Put your Database to Work   Guest acquisition can be an expensive process. Combat these consistently rising costs by reaching and recapturing your own past guests. Data provides excellent insights into guest behaviour as well as offering you a sturdy firewall again big OTAs. After all, stay data is far more useful in understanding your guests’ needs than just booking information. An inexpensive and effective way to attract and retain guests is email. Consider sending off special offers to your past guests in period of low occupancy, or set up an informative email newsletter that is sent out every month.   4. Improve Your Support for Mobile Browsing and Booking   Mobile’s kind of a big deal now. Maybe you’ve heard. Keep up with the times by working with your web developers and booking engine partners to improve the mobile experience for guests booking through directly your website. Review the way content is shown on mobile phones and tablets, and then take steps to ensure ease of use and general readability. On a more basic level, make sure your phone number appears prominently on each page for guests who wish to call you immediately, rather than wade through the website copy. All in all, simply focus on making it easy for guests to research and book your hotel on their phones, and then don’t be surprised when they do just that.   5. Test and Learn. And Test and Learn.   One of the many reasons OTAs have captured the hearts and minds of travel bookers is their passionate commitment to testing. Learn from this process and measure each change you make to see whether it outperforms current efforts, then repeat the process again and again to continually improve on positive results. There are many tools out there that allow you to conduct A/B tests easily and in an inexpensive manner – you merely need to put them to work.   Driving direct bookings is an ongoing process. You must constantly work to improve your copy and images, utilise your data to provide targeted messages to particular guest segments, ensure those guests can browse and book through your hotel website regardless of their device using, test your assumptions and build on the results.   While it may seem like a lot to take in, the alternative is continuing to pay more for guests whose loyalty lies with a specific booking channel, or alternatively, with guests with no loyalty at all.   To find out more about driving direct bookings, or to find out more about hiring your very own revenue manager, simply contact Hotel Revenue Management on +27 (0) 744 90 77 11 or jaco@hotel-revenue-manager.com.