Can your hotel website design be why your hotel doesn't see many guests? Yes.
Your hotel's website gives your potential clients an overview of your business. In this digitally progressing age, the first thing most people do to know about a company is go to its website. And the website doesn't only provide contact and pricing information but also reflects your brand's image and identity.
While creating a hotel website, most people make mistakes that result in a lousy design, driving potential customers away and, worse, to the competition's site. If you want to avoid being one of those people, read along to learn the viable tips to create the best hotel website design and its importance.
Importance of a Good Hotel Website Design
Thirty-eight percent (38%) of the users leaves a website if they find the layout unappealing. You wouldn't want to miss out on this massive chunk of users. Below are some more reasons to create a hotel website that catches the user's eye.
1. Shows Your Hotel is Trustworthy
Your hotel website design plays a crucial role in building brand credibility. A proper design shows that you spent money on your website. And when people know you've spent money building your brand's components, it gives them an impression that you're serious and care about the quality of services you sell to your consumers.
2. Creates a Great Customer Experience
A website design doesn't only refer to the visual component but also the functionality. A fully functioning website allows your perspectives to collect the information they need from your website, such as contact info, advance payments, location, room prices, etc.
Moreover, the better your website's UX and UI, the more people it will attract and the more leads it will generate.
3. Gives You a Point Over Your Competitors
Numerous hotels are trying to push each other to the side to come up front and steal clients. You need to step ahead of them. Creating the best hotel website design is one of the things that will set you apart from your competitors.
4. Educates Your Potential Guests About Your Brand Values
No matter what kind of business, brand values are essential to attract customers. They will tell your prospects what things your hotel values. When your brand values align with your customers' values, they are more likely to choose your hotel over any other.
Your hotel website's colors, layout, and other components reflect your brand's values. Therefore, they need to be appealing and complement each other.
Tips to Design the Best Hotel Website
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
Before you start brainstorming for your website, consider looking at hotel website design examples on websites like Dribbble or the sites of renowned hotels. This can get your brain going and give you ideas of what you want your site to look like.
Now, let's move to the tips you can use as your ultimate hotel website design guide.
1. Ensure Your Layout is Responsive
More than half of the website traffic comes from mobile devices, making it necessary for designers and developers to build a mobile-friendly website. Some designers might start by designing websites for small screens, then scale them up for larger screens.
Another reason why your hotel website design must be suitable to view across all devices is SEO. Google rewards mobile responsive websites with a high ranking. Here are some ways to make your design responsive:
- Ensure the text is readable. Use easy-to-read font styles and keep the text big enough.
- Keep the links and buttons farther away from each other.
- Avoid stuffing too much. The simpler, the better.
- Steer clear from the horizontal scroll. They ruin a good user experience.
- Ensure your website is scannable. Nobody reads from word to word.
- Optimize page load speed. Often heavy media can be the reason for slow speed.
2. Visual Hierarchy
The visual hierarchy shows the importance of each component on your website. It will help you create a hotel website design that doesn't look cluttery and distracting, which drives the visitors away in most cases.
The visual hierarchy refers to designing each component in a way that gets as much attention as it should because not every element of your site will be equally important. For instance, a CTA button is more important than your website's logo. Therefore, people should notice your CTA button before your logo.
Take a look at the picture below. See how every component fights to get the viewer's attention making the design look cluttery and annoying?
Image taken from Pinterest
If you don't want to create a hotel website design that annoys your customers' eyes, like the picture above irritates yours, use the listed-below visual hierarchy principles.
When the component is not essential:
- Keep the size small.
- Surround it with other ingredients. But avoid the clutter simultaneously.
- Keep the color contrast low.
- Place it at the bottom of the page.
When the component is essential:
- Keep the size large.
- Surround it with whitespace.
- Keep the color contrast low.
- Place it above the page fold. Preferably somewhere at the top of the page.
- Consider making it in a video or motion graphics format.
3. Keep the Reservation Forms at the Top
Your reservation forms are your CTA buttons. And remember we talked about how the essential components go above the page fold?
When people land on your site and your reservation form is the first thing they see, they may be encouraged to enter the arrival and departure dates only to see the pricing and availability. When they see your rooms, pricing, and availability, they may like it and be convinced to choose your hotel for their stay, even if they didn't come to finalize a place.
4. Remember Multi-lingual Guests
Your hotel website will get visits from people who don't speak English. Therefore, it's great to make your site available in multiple languages. This will create a great user experience encouraging people to return to your hotel when they need a place to stay again.
5. Video Banner or Slideshows
Image taken from Phos
You can display an eye-catching video or a slideshow of your hotel and its facilities as your site's banner. An engaging video will encourage your audience to stay longer on your site, and this may give something to their eyes that they might consider your hotel as an option.
6. Consistent Color Schemes
One of the keys to creating the best hotel website design is using a consistent color scheme where the colors complement each other. Inconsistent color schemes make your website look unprofessional, which is enough for a customer's trust to wear off.
Moreover, ensure the chosen colors go well with your hotel's theme. Meaning if your hotel is designed in a modern manner, go for modern colors' shades.
To pick the colors that complement each other, you can visit Colorhunt.io. Or you can use different tools, such as Adobe's color wheel.
7. Relevant Images
Using the right images is essential to create a hotel website that catches the visitors' eye. Every photo must be exquisite, from your site's logo to the pictures of the rooms.
Here are some tips to make your website images impactful:
- Steer clear from stock photos.
- Include people in your photographs.
- Ensure your picture serves a purpose. They will ignore it if it doesn't do anything for the visitor.
- Keep the orientation landscape.
- Select the right image and file size.
Remember to include images of every area of your hotel (lobby, pool, spa, garden, corridors, etc.).
8. Display Reviews
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
Remember to dedicate a section or webpage for your guests to leave reviews when designing your site. That feedback tells you what your guests like and dislike about your hotel and helps your potential customers trust you. Nearly everyone checks reviews before buying from a business.
Get Your Hotel Website Without Paying Thousands of Dollars
It's no mystery that hiring a web developer requires you to have a couple of grand ready to slip out of your pocket. We know spending that money is difficult, especially when you're just starting. In this case, Strikingly has got you covered. We are a website builder with millions of users worldwide.
Strikingly allows you to create a mobile-responsive website using ready-to-use templates. You just have to customize them by adding and removing components and changing colors, and pictures, which can be done from the intuitive site editor.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly's ridiculously easy-to-use website editor offers numerous customization options. You can personalize almost everything from navigation bars and background media to layout and create your sections.
Moreover, Strikingly enables you to add multiple sections, such as Gallery and Big Media, to display your hotel's pictures.
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
After learning the tips above, if you still have trouble designing a website, you can start with a simple design and later make changes when you think of new ideas. Lastly, don't hesitate to revise web design principles. They will be a great help in creating the best hotel website design.
