AT ALBION, WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY…

Unless you are a leading travel sector brand, the chances are that most of your website is left completely to guesswork. Usually, this is because you hired a “web designer” to select a pre-designed, pre-built holiday or travel based template and they did the job of switching the placeholder images and wording with the content you provided. Yet this has been shown time and time again to be one of the worst mistakes your brand could make. Why? Well, because most generic website themes and templates are built by theme designers that focus on graphics – not by a conversion rate optimisation agency that have extensively tested what works best to generate online bookings.

If you are not aware of CRO best practices or neglect to refine your website layout and wording using split testing, it is likely time to ask yourself some basic questions: How do you know if the wording on your homepage reflects the best way to build trust and convert maximum bookings? How do you know, for a fact, that the placement of your holiday search or booking form isn’t holding you back from more sales? And which trust elements are missing from your homepage?

The above questions can be answered in two ways. Firstly, by looking at the layout and contents of TUI, Thomas Cooke, Last Minute and noting that their search and booking form gets the prime positioning above all other contents on the page. Or secondly, by implementing A/B split testing that will show for a fact that some layouts and wording generate more sales with the same amount of traffic than others do. You can trust that the big players can’t afford to leave money on the table, and why should they?

At Albion, we provide a range of Conversion Rate Optimisation design and copywriting services that are coupled with scientific A/B and multivariate testing services. This gives our clients everything they need to understand why certain layouts and wording works so much better than generic website layouts to turn visitors into more profits. Unsure of travel website best practices? Take a look at your website and answer the questions below to find out if your reliance on a non-specialist web designer is reducing your monthly bookings and sales figures:

Does your booking form sit at the top of your homepage and contain only the fields it needs to?

If you answered no, then be aware that only a fraction of your visitors will bother to scroll down the page to fill out the form to see what is on offer. Worse is that only a small share of visitors will bother to click links in order to go and find your holiday or travel product search and booking form. Just as important is the fact the more fields you have in the form, the fewer people will fill it out in order to see a list of relevant vacations or days out they can choose from.

Sure, you can have them fill out a whole bunch of fields relating to their specific needs when they come to book and pay for a certain trip – but what’s important is that they first tell you where they want to go, where they are setting off from and when they might want to travel. With this information you can send them to a list of results you know will be of interest to them. Hide your form down the page and you have missed your chance of displaying the holiday they are most likely to buy.

Does your homepage show a large slideshow that showcases your best offerings?

If you answer yes, then you may want to remove it. Really! Again, most websites are built using generic templates with huge slideshows that showcase the products you want to promote. But wait… Slideshows are known by CRO experts to be one of the biggest “conversion killers” that un-optimised travel and tourism websites suffer from. Why? 1 – because the huge images can take ages to load, leaving the content area empty until the large image files load up, and 2, because all that information on the second, third and other sites simply isn’t seen by your visitors. So unless you repeat this essential information elsewhere down the homepage, nobody will see your price or quality guarantees, booking or payment options, offers and discounts. Indeed, these elements need to be visible on every product page alongside details about the individual holiday or trip.

Is your holiday search or booking form visible and easy to use in all devices?

If you answered no because mobile phone users need to scroll down to view the form or because some input fields are hidden from view or obscured by other elements such as cookie notices, then it is worth considering making design changes. Because the majority of people research travel arrangements and holiday options on their mobile devices, before using a tablet or laptop to do the actual booking, you are inadvertently putting obstacles in their way. Most people know that the big travel brands have cleverly designed user interfaces that make life easy for us to see what is on offer – and unless you do the same they will happily bounce away from your site to book their trip elsewhere.

Do you highlight important trust elements so that visitors can skim read your homepage?

Countless travel website split-tests have shown time and again that unless your visitors can see the most common trust elements, they are much less likely to book their vacation. This stands to reason of course. However, many of these elements are an “after-thought” that are squeezed into generic templated websites. We’re talking about things like logos of travel associations you are a member of, or industry bodies you are governed by. Guarantees, testimonials and user reviews are all among the factors that, if neglected, trigger alarm bells in your potential customers’ minds.

Do you let existing customers sell your service for you and help new customers choose what to buy?

Many potential travellers are unsure exactly where to go for their annual package holiday or weekend trips. By showing them poll results, ratings and reviews written by your existing customers, they can be guided into which travelling options will suit their needs best. Not only that, but by including sections on your homepage that list the most popular, most recently added and most discounted holidays on offer, you can encourage them to view and book the products you currently most want to sell – whether that be packages you need to off-load quickly or indeed the holidays that make you the most profit.

The above best practices are well known to the leading travel agents and holiday brands, which is why you see all of these essential elements on their homepages. They were not put there by guesswork or on a whim, but because split testing proved for a fact they work towards generating more profits from the same amount of online traffic. Indeed, a conversion rate optimisation expert with experience in the travel and tourism field would be able to take a glance at your website and point out a whole range of “friction points” and untapped opportunities already proven to reduce sales. These are the easy-win sales your site was actually created to generate, so why turn paying customers away just because your site wording and layout was left to the guesswork of a web developer or template designer?

It might be helpful to look at the sites of the leaders in the travel industry to make sure yours is making best use of A/B split test results already undertaken. You can tap into the knowledge already accumulated by Albion’s team to ensure your brand isn’t leaking sales to your competitors. After all, resolving these hidden conversion optimisation mistakes may be the most important thing you do all year to increase profits and achieve the ongoing growth most travel brands aim for.

Albion makes the process of creating new variations of your homepage or booking form layout a simple one. We use a range of A/B split testing tools such as Optimizely to make the changes both your and our team suggest. We then send a share of your existing traffic to each variation and allow you the customer to sit back and monitor the results as they come in. Then when you are ready you can give your web developer or our team the go-ahead to implement the winning variations.

The only thing to ask yourself at this stage is: did we guess what to put on our website and do we know for a fact that other variations wouldn’t generate more bookings, revenue and profits? Today is likely the right time to join those of your competitors that use their sites as dynamic online marketing tools. Sites that let them better understand how their potential and existing customers think and behave. Then tap into that intelligence to make more money from the increased profits and ongoing growth your brand deserves.