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THE HOTEL MARKETER’S PLAYBOOK FOR CREATING, MANAGING AND MEASURING A HIGH-CONVERTING WEBSITE / 1

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From the Storefront to the Shopping Cart:

How Successful Online Retailers Drive ConversionsChapter One:

Create a Website That ConvertsChapter Two:

Measurement: Website Performance Metrics Demystified Chapter Three:

High Performance Doesn’t Mean High CostVizlly:

High Performance Websites Made Easy

About Leonardo

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The Hotel Marketer’s

Playbook for Creating, Managing

and Measuringa high-converting website////////////////////////////////////////////

Table of Contents/////////////////////////////////////////////

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The fact that you’re reading this right now suggests that you’re probably facing challenges with your website. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In 2015, 60% of hoteliers we polled said that driving website conversions was their biggest challenge. And 26% said they struggled with tracking their website’s performance.1

The goal of this ebook is to address these common challenges, and arm you with the necessary tools to improve conversion rates and track the performance of your most profitable channel – your website. We’ve collected some fantastic insights and tips from three leading experts in the travel industry – Scott Yankton, Alicia Whalen and John McAuliffe.

What you’ll learn from this eBook:

u The basic formula for building a high performance website that drives conversions u How and where your website can be improved u New ways to build a high converting website that will save you time and money

Enjoy the read!

Joey EganVice President, Marketing & Customer Experience, Leonardo

Thanks for Downloading!


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Scott YanktonScott is a contract

management consultant and the president of Scott

Yankton Consulting with extensive experience leading teams

in delivering successful corporate initiatives. He has a history of delivering

complex projects and building new programs that are embraced with high degrees of acceptance and satisfaction.

Alicia WhalenAlicia Whalen is a digital + social media marketing strategist. She’s an avid tweeter and lover of travel, technology and the Ah-Ha moments. Connect with Alicia on Twitter, LinkedIn or at ideahatching.com.

John McAuliffeJohn McAuliffe has been President of Leonardo since June 2012 after four successful years as Chief Marketing Officer, helping the organization develop and implement a scalable sales and marketing foundation. As a 25+ year marketing veteran and entrepreneur, John is a professional with hands on experience in leading market-driven strategies for disruptive technologies.

Special Thanks To Our Contributing Authors


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http://www.scottyankton.com/about/

http://www.scottyankton.com/about/

http://www.twitter.com/Alicia_Whalen_

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciawhalen

http://www.ideahatching.com







Increasingly our lives are spent online – especially when it comes to being a consumer. We can buy just about anything online these days – clothing, shoes, cars – heck, we can even order groceries with recipes included for the week and have them delivered to our front door. Travel, and specifically lodging, is no different. With a few clicks we can book a quick 24 hour business trip or a 3 week dream vacation in the south of France.

One of the challenges that comes with the online world is that there is also increased competition and choice. Just consider the travel shopping journey. Today, travel shoppers visit an average of 38 travel sites before booking a vacation online. And their search is not limited to just one device – 98% of consumers now move “sequentially” between different screens (desktop, mobile and tablet) within the same day. So how do you stand out and win their business?

From the Storefront to the Shopping Cart:

How Successful Online Retailers Drive Conversions


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http://info.advertising.expedia.com/path-to-purchase

http://www.leonardo.com/resources/traveling-across-screens-how-consumers-research-and-book-hotels/







Online retail giants, Amazon and Zappos, have been focused on solving this problem for years. Both companies are solely based online, and have perfected

the online shopping experience, treating their homepage as their “storefront” and their “shopping cart” as the all-important cash register. They’ve realized that having targeted, relevant and personalized content across their site provides an optimized

user experience; one which translates directly into sales. In many ways, hotel marketers can learn a lot from these online ecommerce giants, but first, we’ll need to take a closer look at what makes them successful.

How Zappos Zaps Its Competition

“We want to build a personal emotional connection with our customers, to create happiness so our customers tell their friends and family,” says Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.

It’s that simple, yet profound, mentality that has transformed Zappos into the “king of customer service” and a model for ecommerce success. On any given day, 75% of purchases on Zappos come from returning customers. What makes Zappos’ customers so happy? There are a few main things we can take away from their marketing strategy:

u Know you audience

u Be a go-to resource for customers

u Provide a unique offering (Skyword)


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http://www.smartinsights.com/customer-relationship-management/customer-service-and-support/zappos-5-lessons-in-wow-ing-customers/

http://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/enterprise-marketing/how-to-create-a-content-marketing-strategy-like-zapposs/







Zappos describes its business model at “high touch” rather than “high tech.” That is, they give shoppers the relevant information they need in order to make an informed decision, and they do it in a unique and personal way. For example, they use video to describe and demonstrate their products, and opt for real Zappos employees over models and actors. These videos are said to have a sales impact of up to 30%. By leveraging the personalities of their own employees, Zappos is able to build a meaningful relationship with their customers, which continually drives them back to the website.

How Amazon Became King of the JungleToday, Amazon is a $75 billion dollar company. Its success is largely built on putting the customer experience first. This can be seen in everything from their free returns policy to the fast page load times. Every detail has been thought of to reassure the customer at every stage of the buyer’s journey that a purchase from Amazon.com is the right decision. And they continually look for ways to strengthen the customer relationship through tactics like personalized emails and customized special offers.

But perhaps the one thing that truly sets Amazon apart from other online retailers is the user experience (UX). The ultimate goal of any eCommerce site (including yours) is to create a user experience that increases the likelihood of a purchase (Web Designer Depot). And Amazon’s “one-click ordering” process makes this as simple as possible. In fact, it decreases cart abandonment rates because customers don’t need to fumble their

way through entering credit card details each time they order.

What Can We Learn From These eCommerce Giants?As an hotelier, B&B Innkeeper, or accommodation provider, it’s

important to think about your website in the same way Zappos, Amazon and other successful online retailers do. The buyer’s journey continues to grow in complexity, and consumers are visiting more channels than ever before to make a purchase decision. You can’t stop that, but you can make your website more relevant to them when they visit, and provide a clear path to conversion.

“500 different people go to Amazon.com. Each one sees a different version of the homepage. How come? It’s personalized! It’s no secret why Amazon does that:

content personalization makes money.”– Conversion XL


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http://www.reelseo.com/video-demos-sales-zappos/

http://blog.clientheartbeat.com/ecommerce-customer-experience/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/an-analysis-of-the-amazon-shopping-experience/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/an-analysis-of-the-amazon-shopping-experience/

http://conversionxl.com/how-to-use-personalized-content-and-behavioral-targeting-for-improved-conversions/







1Chapter One:

Create a Website That ConvertsScott Yankton, Founder and CEO of Scott Yankton Consulting

As Amazon and Zappos demonstrate, a high performing website doesn’t just happen by accident. There’s a great deal of science to it. We turned to Scott Yankton, management consultant and President of Scott Yankton Consulting, to share his insights and best practices on how to create a winning hotel website that converts.

For the past 20 years I’ve been helping executives with their most challenging corporate initiatives. When I work with accommodation providers in my consulting company, one of the most common questions I get asked is how to increase conversions on their website.

Digital Marketers in Hospitality have two main tasks. The first is getting potential customers to your site. This is accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media, advertising, etc.


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http://blog.leonardo.com/an-seo-dictionary-for-hotels-the-basics-to-get-you-started/







The second task, and what we are discussing here, is once they are on your site, how to keep them there and get them to book (i.e. conversion).

There are 3 keys to better conversion for lodging websites.

Step 1:

Attract and Engage with a Superior User ExperienceYou’ve likely heard the terms “usability” and “user experience” (UX) before. They’re popular buzzwords that might sound super technical, but they’re actually quite simple, not to mention the backbone of any high performing website. First, let’s get clear on the difference between usability and user experience. Usability relates to task-based interactions; the ability for a user to do something intuitively and easily on your website. User experience, on the other hand, refers to how a user feels when they interact with your website.2

According to Google, 52% of travelers visit your hotel website after seeing you on an Online Travel Agency (OTA) site like Expedia or Booking.com. So once you have them

there it is essential to convert that visit to a sale.

STEP 1:

USABILITY/USER EXPERIENCE

STEP 2:

SOCIAL PROOFSTEP 3:

OPTIMIZE CHECKOUT

How easy do you make it for users to find what they want?

What do others think of your property?

How easy is it to book?

Usability

Making a task easy and intuitive

Minimizing steps & removing roadblocks

What users do / How they do it

UX

Making a task meaningful and valuable

Creating emotional connection

What users feel


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Just because a website is easy to use, doesn’t mean it offers a good user experience, and just because it has a good user experience doesn’t mean it’s intuitive to use. Both must be given equal attention for a website to truly succeed.

So what can you do to improve your website’s usability and user experience to drive more conversions? I recommend the following:

Know Your Guests74% of online consumers get frustrated when the content on websites has nothing to do with their search query,3 so it’s important that the first thing travel shoppers see on your website is relevant and captures their attention.

This all comes down to knowing your guests and targeting them with the right content. If your main clientele are business travelers, make a point of showing off your meeting rooms and event spaces front and center.

If you get a lot of families, show off your swimming pool, or fun things for them to do in the area. The goal is to deliver content that positions your property as the best choice in meeting their needs.

Answer Questions QuicklyDo you receive enquiries about your pet policy? Do guests ask about your meeting rooms and events spaces (including details such as catering and capacity)? The quicker you can answer their questions online, the quicker they can decide if your hotel meets their needs.

If you’re not sure what your guests want to know, check out your online reviews for some ideas. Guests often mention what they were looking for, and what things appealed to them (or didn’t) about your property.

Create a Website That Converts

“When you optimize for everyone, you

optimize for no one.”– Conversion Conference


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http://www.conversionconference.com/blog/delivering-the-best-user-experience-through-targeting-techniques/







Prioritize Your Value PropositionPrioritize your value proposition. Your homepage copy should convey information in order of importance.

If the most popular question you receive is, “where are you located?” then the first heading on your homepage should make this clear.

Show and TellImages and short videos are the most requested items in usability studies.4 That’s because our brains process visuals much faster than text. So in addition to a nice, catchy headline about your pet-friendliness, add a picture of a family checking-in with a dog, or a short video featuring some four-legged guests.

You can also use images on your website as directional cues to guide users’ eye path. For example, if you want someone to click on the “book now” button on the top right of your website, include an image of guests looking up in the same direction, to guide the visitor’s eye to the call-to-action.

The Top 3 Things People Asked For in Usability

Studies

Room pictures from all angles

Amenities

Food (if there’s a restaurant on site)


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Get To The PointVery few people will read blocks of text to get the answers they need. In fact, people only read 49% of a webpage with about 100 words, and only 28% of webpage with 600 words.5 Make it easy for readers to quickly scan your offering by using sub-headings, short paragraphs and bullet points.

Be ClearOne clear call-to-action is all you need on each page of your website, including your homepage. What’s the one thing you want visitors to do? If it’s to “book now,” don’t confuse them by giving too many choices. Guide your visitors down the desired path with minimal distractions.

Start by determining the conversion goal of each page, and then align your call to action to it. For example, if you have a wedding page, and the goal is to receive more wedding inquiries, the call to action should be “talk to our wedding planner.”

Be Easy and IntuitiveAccording to Google, 53% of travelers visit your hotel’s website after seeing your listing on an Online Travel Agency (OTA). If people don’t know where to go or what to click when they arrive, they’re going to go back to the OTA because it is more familiar.

Approximately 25% of users report they leave a website because it’s “too complicated to navigate.” Don’t let yours be one of them. Ensure you have a quick, intuitive and easy navigation to check out.

greenbriarlodging.com

Asking real customers what they think about your site

and how to improve is invaluable.


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http://www.greenbriarlodging.com

http://www.greenbriarlodging.com







Step 2:

Validate with Social Proof and Eliminate Fear of Booking If you’ve checked all of the boxes in step 1, your visitors will be engaged and interested in your hotel because you’ve

created a positive experience and answered their questions. The next step they’ll take is to verify that your hotel is the best fit for them. They’ll do this by looking for social proof.

What is Social Proof?Social proof is independent third-party feedback that gives travel shoppers the boost of confidence they need to book your hotel. It can include anything generated by someone else that tells people about your property – reviews, ratings, awards – and so on.

It’s human nature to seek social proof before making a decision. So your guests will seek it out whether you like it or not. The key is to provide it for them, right on your website so that they don’t go elsewhere to find the validation they need.

Here are some examples of social proof to embed right into your website.

Reviews 53% of travelers won’t book a hotel without reviews (ReviewPro). That’s more than half of your potential customers. Furthermore, people are actually willing

to pay more for hotels with a higher satisfaction rating. If two hotels’ prices are the same, shoppers are 3.9 times more likely to choose a hotel with higher review scores, and 76% of customers are actually willing to pay more for a hotel with higher review scores (TrustYou).

Don’t miss out on securing bookings by not having reviews on your website.

TripAdvisor offers widgets that automatically display your reviews within your hotel website. All you have to do is simply insert a line of HTML into your site’s source code or email it to your webmaster.


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https://www.reviewpro.com/blog/what-is-guest-intelligence/

http://marketing.trustyou.com/acton/fs/blocks/showLandingPage/a/4951/p/p-00d6/t/page/fm/0

https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Widgets



http://www.jhousegreenwich.com/reviews.html







Customer Testimonials and User-Generated Content (UGC)In addition to reviews, you can use customer testimonials and user-generated content to further gain travel shoppers’ trust. After all, 52% of Facebook users say their friends’ photos inspired their holiday choice and travel plans (Rezdy).

Take a look at how The Hyatt Place incorporates UGC into their brand strategy. They have successfully created an Instagram page where they post their property’s best features and local attractions, and they post frequently, which is key.

They also encourage their guests to tag their photos using their hashtags. This has created a connection between property and traveler, which has allowed for a wide variety of guests’ photos to appear on their Instagram page.

“78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, whereas only 14% trust advertisements.”

– ReviewPro

instagram.com/hyattplace



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https://www.instagram.com/hyattplace/

https://www.reviewpro.com/blog/what-is-guest-intelligence/









AwardsIf you’ve received awards, make sure to showcase them on your homepage as another form of social proof. Awards show travel shoppers that you’re exceptional at what you do. I’ve seen a lot of sites with their awards at the bottom. Instead, put them at the top so people actually see them.

Third-Party Certification Third-party certification icons create confidence as users go through the booking path. Consumers have a tendency to be wary of making online transactions on websites they don’t know, so calm those fears by indicating that transactions made on your site are safe and secure. Evidence That Others are Booking Showing evidence that others are booking creates urgency for the travel shopper to book now. This works because, for one, travel shoppers don’t want to miss out a great deal. Secondly, it reassures them that other people want to stay at your property too.


By embedding reviews on your website, you’re keeping visitors on your website. Once

they’re off your site, you’re risking they’re not going to

come back.


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Step 3:

Convert with Optimized CheckoutYou engaged your guest in step one, calmed their fears in step two, and now they’re ready to book. 81% of people abandon travel bookings online.6 You’ve already brought them this far down the path to purchase, you don’t want to lose their booking to another travel website or one of your competitors now.

What Is An Optimized Booking Process?Optimizing your booking process is about how easy you make it to push that “book now” button and ensure visitors actually convert and don’t drop off midway through. Cart abandonment happens all the time online and in real life too. It’s probably safe to say that we have all (at one time or another) been in line at a grocery store ready to check out and literally abandoned our shopping carts.



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53% abandon bookings when they’re shown the total price

26% abandon bookings when asked for personal details

21% abandon bookings when asked for payment details

When Do Travelers Abandon Bookings?


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Eight Keys to Optimizing Your Checkout1. Only ask for information you need (you lose 10% of your

bookings per every unnecessary field)

2. Explain why you need the information you’re collecting

3. Ensure travel shoppers can book with minimal clicks and pages

4. Have clear call-to-actions (don’t make them guess where to click!)

5. Don’t add calls-to-action that distract from check-out (like registering for an e-newsletter – that can be displayed after the check-out is complete)

6. Assure customers that their check-out is secure

7. Assure customers that they’re getting the best deal possible

8. Add a sense of urgency to ensure they book now

“It’s the paradox of choice — more

options attract more potential customers, but too many options

can overwhelm consumers and cause them to abandon the purchase. The

inverse is also true: studies have shown that reducing choices

increases conversions.” - Skift


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What We Learned in this ChapterImplementing the strategies outlined in this chapter are what will set your hotel website on the path to better conversion and performance (meaning visitors will stay on your website and book a room). To sum it all up, I’ll leave you with these four thoughts:

1. Make it easy for shoppers to use your site and understand why your hotel is right for them

2. Tell interesting stories of your property with pictures (lots of them), videos, and bullet points that are relevant to your target guests

3. What others think matters - pull in user-generated content and reviews to keep travel shoppers on your site

4. When they are ready to book, be sure they won’t be stopped by a confusing or frustrating booking process


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Before you start implementing the strategies for improving website conversions that Scott shared in Chapter 1, it’s important to understand how your website is performing today.

We enlisted the help of Alicia Whalen, a digital marketing strategist, blogger at ideahatching.com and co-founder of Hashtagio.com - a social media technology company, to explain how to measure the performance of your website. She’ll explore the most important metrics to track on your site, and offer baselines that you can measure your site against.

One Quick Note...Most of the content in this chapter is based on Google Analytics software, a free web analytics tool that helps you analyze website visitor traffic and paint a complete picture of your audience and their needs, wherever they are along the path to purchase.

In order to properly understand and analyze your success, you’ll need an analytics tool like Google Analytics installed on your website. You can learn more about Google Analytics by visiting www.google.com/analytics.

This section also refers to Vizlly analytics, which is the marketing performance measurement tool within the Vizlly Digital Marketing System made by Leonardo to track engagement and purchase intent on hotel websites.

When it comes to measuring website performance, there are four main things to look at.

2Chapter Two:

Measurement: Website Performance Metrics Demystified


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http://www.ideahatching.com

http://www.hashtagio.com

http://www.google.com/analytics







AudienceKnowing who your website visitors are is core to successful targeting, and therefore, a website that is relevant to them and drives conversions. You want to understand things like:

Demographics:

u Where in the world are they?

u What languages do they speak?

Technology:

u What kind of browsers and operating systems are they are using?

u What kinds of devices are they using?

TrafficTraffic is about where your website visitors are coming from. Google Analytics breaks down Traffic Acquisition into six categories: organic search, email, direct, referral, social and other. Here’s what they mean to you.

Organic High organic traffic tells you travel shoppers are finding your website through search, giving you an indication that the content on your website is being indexed by search engines and that the keywords you’ve used on your website are working. Traffic coming organically should have a lower bounce rate because someone searched for your website and found you – they should be less likely to leave if they found what they’re looking for.

Measurement: Website Performance Metric Demystified

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” –

Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP


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EmailIf you have an email newsletter that includes links to your website, then you should have traffic being acquired that way.

DirectAny traffic to your website that came from the visitor typing your web address into their browser. These are visitors that already know your hotel.

Referral Referral traffic comes from other websites that are linking to your property website – such as destination marketing organizations or local attractions.

Social Launching a social media strategy and getting active on your target audience’s social networks should result in social traffic. Google now deems social referrals

(traffic from social networks) as an endorsement that the website is a relevant result, so if your property has a Facebook page, for example, it’s important to push Facebook visitors to visit your website, and vice versa.

Note that Google Analytics counts TripAdvisor as a social channel. Ideally, the bounce rate should be lower through TripAdvisor – if travel shoppers are reading positive reviews on TripAdvisor and then continuing to your website, they should also be less likely to leave without booking. Referral traffic is very important – you want your top 10 referral sites to be local destination marketing organizations.

The health of your website can be seen from the traffic acquisition – if you’re doing SEO right, then organic should be the biggest source of traffic.



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EngagementMeasuring engagement requires analyzing which pages people are looking at and for how long, which are indicators of the quality and relevance of your website content to your visitors. Essentially, engagement metrics tell us if we are giving visitors a reason to stay and if they’re finding what they need.

New vs. Returning Visitors New versus returning visitors tells you how many travel shoppers are visiting your website for the first time and how many are returning visitors. This metric is not as important for properties and hotels because you don’t necessarily need visitors to return again and again – if they’ve booked, then they got what they needed. A destination marketing website, on the other hand, should have a higher percentage of returning visitors while they’re researching their upcoming trip.

Unique Visitors This indicates how many distinct visitors came to your website during a certain time. Visitors, on the other hand, tells you how many times in total, including returning visitors, you garnered during a certain time period.

Session DurationSession duration tells you how long travel shoppers are spending on your website. For hospitality websites, the average session duration is between two to four minutes.


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Behavior Google Analytics’ behavior reports show you which content travel shoppers are engaging with on your website. Page views indicate how many pages visitors are viewing during a certain time period; unique page views indicates how many of those page views were made by distinct individuals. In this category, you’ll also be able to determine the “average time on page” – how long visitors are spending on your website. The “exit rate” is the percentage of visitors who navigated off your website, after possibly clicking an external link on your website. It tells you which page visitors are “exiting” from – for example, your “rooms and accommodations” page may have a high “exit rate” which is fine – since your booking reservation page may count as an exit.

In Vizlly, you get access to media performance metrics tell you which media items are the most viewed to help you understand which content consumers are engaging with most.

Bounce Rate Your bounce rate indicates how many people landed on your website and left without going anywhere else. A high bounce rate (the average for the hospitality industry is about 40%) can mean:

u Travel shoppers can’t find the content they’re looking for (or the content is not appealing to them)

u The website is not organized in a clear and coherent manner – it’s hard to navigate and find what travel shoppers want



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Purchase Intent and ConversionPurchase intent and conversion are the most important metrics to look at because the ultimate goal of your website is to drive people to click the “book now” button (purchase intent) and complete the booking process (conversion).

Purchase IntentThe desired action you want visitors to take on your website is navigating to your booking engine, which demonstrates an intent to purchase. So the way to track purchase intent is by looking at the number of clicks on your “book now” button which can be done in Vizlly.

You can dive deeper to determine which media items you’re presenting on your website are driving purchase intent, for example, the top performing media items that cause visitors to click on the “book now” button on that page.

Vizlly also shows you the number of visitors clicking on your “book now” button from your desktop website, mobile sites and social media apps, as well as the number of visitors who directly call your

property from your mobile sites.

ConversionSince a completed booking is what we consider a conversion, you’ll need to look to your booking engine for information on number of bookings and analyze performance that way. Most reputable booking engines provide analytics. If your website visitors are demonstrating purchase intent but you’re not getting many bookings, you’ll want to take a look at whether your booking engine is optimized for maximum conversions.


“Think of your hotel website like a cash register. You don’t

need people to spent a lot of time there - you just want them

to book as quickly as possible.” – Alicia Whalen


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What We Learned in this ChapterThe goal of this chapter was to demystify hotel website metrics and measurements and explain what they mean. You can use it as a reference as you start measuring your own website to identify opportunities to improve performance. With that, I’d like to leave you with a few simple suggestions:

1. If you have Google Analytics installed on your site, it’s easy to do a quick website health check by looking at your unique visitors, bounce rate, average time on site, and pages per visit this month or year compared to last month or year to benchmark peaks in performance

2. You’re off to a good start if your organic traffic is one of the top three website traffic referral sources for your hotel website, as it indicates that you’re being found in search results

3. Compare your booking numbers (you can get these from your booking engine) with purchase intent (book now button clicks) to determine your booking conversion rate


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Every hotel marketer strives to achieve the same thing - to drive the most bookings for the least amount of money, time and effort possible. But they’re used to having to rely upon expensive digital marketing agencies to build and manage their websites and help drive travelers to them. What I commonly hear from hoteliers is that their agencies take way too long to

make the simplest changes on their website and don’t fulfil the promises of increased bookings they make during their sales pitch.

This is a good time to be a marketer because there is a much better, less expensive and less time-consuming way to build and maintain a hotel website that actually converts. Most of all, it doesn’t require an agency. What is this better way? It’s technology.

3Chapter Three:

High Performance Doesn’t Mean High CostJohn McAuliffe, President, Leonardo Worldwide


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Marketing Technology for the Modern Hotel Marketer Cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) website building and digital marketing solutions make the dream of lower cost, higher hotel performance websites a reality. Hoteliers at properties large and small, branded and independent and across the world are turning to technology to take control of their online marketing.

SaaS is Revolutionizing Software AdoptionAs a very smart hotel marketer told me recently, “it’s not that most of us don’t know what to do, it’s committing to change and taking action that is our biggest dilemma.” Thanks to the opening up of the travel technology landscape, any accommodation provider can create a visually-driven website according to best practices, at an affordable price.

Time To Trade Custom Website Development For Intuitive Purpose Build WebsitesYou don’t need a custom designed and developed hotel website in order to tell relevant stories that engage and convert your target guests. Take bricks and mortar retailers as an example. They learned long ago that it’s not about how expensive it is to build your store but rather how you merchandise your product to draw customers in and motivate them to buy. Pop-up retailers with very low cost of “build” can generate the same type of sales per square foot as a highly custom-built retail store. Two main learnings we can take from this:

1. The key is not how your website is built, but rather, how well it performs. There is nothing a custom designed website can do that a template-driven website cannot.

2. Spending more money on your website doesn’t mean you’ll get more results or more bookings.

High Performance Doesn’t Mean High CostHigh Performance Doesn’t Mean High Cost


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Know What to Look for in Hotel Marketing TechnologyThere are Digital Marketing Systems and cloud-based website building technology platforms specialized to almost every industry imaginable as well as one-size-fits-all options. Your best bet is to select a vendor with a solution that is designed for hotels so that you can count on core features that every hotel marketer needs to drive better marketing performance, including:

u Visually compelling website with a clear path to booking on every type of screen and device consumers use during the hotel shopping journey

u Ability to easily publish content consumers look for when shopping for hotel accommodations like room types, offers and unique features on your website

u Digital marketing content that is optimized to be indexed by search engines so that you’re found for the terms that matter to you and your target guests

u Purpose-built templates with well-placed booking engine widget on every single page of the website to drive purchase intent and provide an easy path to the cash register


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Better Website = Better Booking Conversions We can tell you over and over again that a website software solution will alleviate your frustrations and get you better results, but you need social proof to in order to believe it. So here it is.

Thousands of hotels of all types, sizes and locations have adopted the better way to manage their online marketing and more specifically, their hotel websites. One of them is them Z Loft Hotel Bar & Grill.

Paula Farris, Managing Partner, Z Loft Hotel Bar & Grill struggled with how to get travel shoppers to the all of the great features that make the property unique and choose it over the competitors.

Paula subscribed to a SaaS solution to create a visually-driven, mobile optimized website with “book now” integrations on every page. “I wanted to advance us and that’s something I couldn’t have with the website company I was with before,” shared Paula.

In six months since going live the new website, the Z Loft’s direct bookings increased by 50%.“It helped us create a really beautiful

website that people can look at. We’ve increased direct bookings and it’s definitely gotten better every month.” she said.

The Z Loft Hotel is the perfect example of a hotel that knows who it is and what they want: they’re young and hip and they want to attract specific clientele. To do so with limited time and budget, they needed cutting-edge technology that would showcase their uniqueness to the world – and thanks to technology, they can.

High Performance Doesn’t Mean High Cost

zlofthotel.com


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What We Learned in this ChapterWhy continue to manage online marketing the “old fashioned way” when there are options to bring it into modern times? In this chapter, we learned that technology makes it entirely feasible to reduce the amount of time and effort you spend on your hotel website with the net benefit of cutting costs and improving performance.

To wrap it up, I’ll leave you with this food for thought:

1. It’s not about the technology per se, it’s about the problem it solves

2. Adopting a technology solution that gives you control of your website is the way of the modern marketer

3. Hotels like the Z Loft now have a better way to manage their hotel websites that delivers impressive results


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High Performance Websites Made EasyLeonardo’s Vizlly Digital Marketing System ensures you`re telling a relevant, powerful story with the key content the shoppers care about and that increases the amount of time they spend on your website pages and, therefore, the likelihood that they’ll book directly with you. Vizlly websites integrate with any booking engine and have a clear call to action on every page – making it easy for travel shoppers to get to the cash register.

All of these factors influence purchase intent – that is, how many times someone clicks on the `book now` button. One of our customers is seeing a purchase intent ratio of 56% - compare that to industry average of 30-35%. That means that their traffic, most of which is new visitors, are spending time on the site, finding the content that`s relevant to them, and clicking on the book now button.


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About LeonardoLeonardo is a technology company serving the global hospitality industry. We provide e-marketers at hotel brands, management companies, hotel properties and travel websites with technology solutions that improve the way they present their hotels online to travel shoppers.

Our core products include Vizlly, a cloud-based Multi-Channel Digital Marketing System that makes it easy for hotel marketers to create and publish websites, mobile websites, social media apps and digital brochures for third party travel websites; VScape® Digital Asset Management System, an enterprise-level digital asset management and distribution tool that helps hotel chains better source, manage, organize, store, and publish media assets to direct and indirect online channels; and MediaConnect, advanced connectivity for travel websites to access the industry’s definitive source of hotel certified visual content. Key to all products is our extensive connectivity. Using our VNetwork, the largest travel website network in the global hospitality industry including GDSs, Meta Search sites, OTAs and more, hoteliers can publish their content and stories to millions of travel shoppers all over the world on the channels, devices and platforms they use to shop for hotels online.

For more information about Leonardo, visit www.leonardo.com.

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SOURCES 1 Poll data: Leonardo webinar, September 2015 2 Domain7, Usability vs. User Experience: What’s the difference? 3 HubSpot, Stop Being Rude: 22 Data-Backed Reasons to Personalize Your Marketing 4 http://www.leonardo.com/resources/the-clear-path-to-conversions/ 5 Statistic Brain, Attention Span Statistics 6 http://www.salecycle.com/the-reasons-for-booking-abandonment/

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leonardo · accomplished through search engine optimization (seo), pay per click (ppc), social...

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