Understanding the People Who Visit Your Travel Website
There are numerous ways in which you can track traffic to your website, but how do you know what the content should be? Who is coming to your site and why? Is there a pattern? Well, there are a few tips to keep in mind when you are going about understanding users of travel websites.
When you know what type of visitors are coming to your website, you have the opportunity to market to a specific demographic rather than offering a generic website with too much or too little information. There are three main groups of people that use travel websites: the determined individual, the one that wants to compare, and lastly the cautious and hesitant visitor.
You can tell the difference by a few signals. First, watch to see if the visitors are simply looking at prices and going away to another site, and pay attention to what filters are they using to get the answers they require, as well as whether or not they are clicking on to the next page to see what results were found. You can tell if they are paying close attention to certain elements of a page by how long they linger and how they interact with the content.
We can break these groups down even further when understanding users of travel websites.
Determined Visitors
These are the people that will go through several pages on your website so that they can see for themselves everything that you have to offer. They have a great need and caring of a place to go that fits their wonting the most. Once they have had a chance to see everything, they will book all in the same session. They don’t need to come back later to take a look at things. It’s what they want, so they will purchase.
Comparison Shoppers
Every industry has the comparison shopper. They want the most for their buck and they want it to fit their needs of the moment. They will dig even deeper into your site than the determined shoppers do. The best value is all they have in mind–the best deal, period. They aren’t interested in bells and whistles being thrown at them if they aren’t going to get said deal.
The comparison shopper will breeze through at first, so you need to plan on the fact that they will be returning. So you should make it easy for them to find their previous results page by storing their search parameters in cookies. Your site has to break out from the rest. Make it strong, attractive, easy to navigate and easy to understand. Make it gorgeous so people have no choice but to stay at your property. For instance, most comparers go in search of just the price, so you in turn will want to have that has your primary directive while designing your pages. Also keep in mind that these users won’t want to go back and forth constantly for information. In which case, you should make sure all of the most important information is on one page.
The Hesitant and Cautious
These travelers that visit your website may just want to call you on the phone. They have a tendency to be cautious about giving out information over the Internet. They don’t care much to go web-surfing, so they will just be seeking out your property’s personal information to talk to you directly.
Watch to see where these visitors click when they first land on your home page. For instance, if they go straight to the “contact us” page, they are truly not interested in looking at any of your site’s pages. See if they hover over anything for further information. If they do not, you are in good standing. That simply means that they have everything they’re looking for at their fingertips and you don’t need to embellish anything for this group of shopper/traveler.
Make sure your phone number is easy to find. If you offer a contact form, at what point does the visitor hesitate? Are they abandoning the idea of a form altogether? Mark the required fields on the form and don’t ask for too much information.
Generally speaking, as a whole, your website shouldn’t offer more than three filters for the users to choose from so that it doesn’t become a hindrance for them to use the site. You will need to find just the right amount of how many results you show on a search results page. Not enough, people won’t hang around and too much will overwhelm the visitor and make them leave.
When people visit travel websites, they will be the most comfortable when they can see the star ratings and reviews, and an amenities list with hopefully free Wi-Fi in every room. Your images need to be crisp and clear, attention grabbing, and captioned in such a way that keeps their attention on you and your property.
By keeping these ideas and tips in mind, you should be able to grab a better understanding of users of travel websites. With this knowledge will come great success for your company and property.
