Hotel Website Design? It’s not all in the eye of the beholder…

This article deals with the different tips a hotelier should follow in order to design a website that is efficient. Efficient in this sense means achieving the following objectives:

1. Be search engine friendly: the website should come up within the first couple of pages of the search engine
2. Be attractive to visitors so that they actually browse it
3. The ultimate aim being to convert thise visitors into online revenue (i.e. clients)

The first thing to do with the web designer is to prepare and write an online strategy so that both parties ar making sure that they are heading the same way. Obviously, it is about the look and feel of the website which should reflect the concept and the experience the customer will live in the hotel.

The pages shouldn't be too long so that the visitors do not have to screen the whole page to get the information. However, the headlines and keywords they are looking forought to be very straightfoward to find.

Secondly, the navigation should also be fairly easy. The aim is to not frustrate the visitor with him having the impression of getting lost all the time by not finding what he is looking for. Therefore rates, promotions and special offers should appear clearly.

Images are also very important in the sense that they attract the customers'eyes and give them a more realistic idea of what they are to expect for that hotel. Within the same framework of ideas, designers and hoteliers need to pay special attention to whatever is written on the website. Using bold and italic caracters can attract the vistors eye. Nevertheless, they shouldn't be too much text in order for the visitor not to get bored or too much filled in with information. They should keep it simple but informative and attractive. Further, they should also remember that search engines can only read text and design codes. Therefore, these have to be present enough so that the page can easily be found by search engines (eg. the meta data).

Further on, since most of visitors usually arrive on sub pages, it is primordial to have the contact details, address, phone number and so on on each and every pages of the website.

This is a war that has started with the launch of the Internet. It has become for many countries the major tool related to search. Therefore, the concern for businesses has become to be visible on the net. What this areticle is telling us is that visibility is not enough for those businesses to survive. Indeed, they need more in terms of attractiveness, content, navigation in order to turm a visitor into a customer.