In a few short years, having a business website has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to being an essential requirement for any modern business looking to attract and engage with prospects. Today’s modern vacation rental websites not only need to look great, but they must also include the tools you need to convert visitors into leads, prospects, and clients.
Your website is the starting point of the experience that you provide for guests, helping you showcase your properties, providing an easy and convenient way for visitors to make reservations, and integrating with your property management software and channel manager to automate the all-important processes of payments, communications, and management tasks associated with a typical booking.
So what are the essential elements of a successful vacation rental website?
1. Professional design
A site that doesn’t look modern and professional across multiple devices is a non-starter. Colors, type, and tone are specific to every business and should be beautifully presented across the full range of desktop and mobile devices. You should have a style guide for your website and stick to it. You should also include high-quality photos and (preferably) video to captivate your website visitors and encourage them to engage with you. At 365villas, we have a range of website solutions that can help you get up and running quickly, with professionally designed template websites, fully integrated tools that convert your existing website into a lead generation tool, and custom designed websites for businesses looking to stand out online.
2. Simple navigation
Keep visitors on your site longer by keeping things clear, concise, and easy to find. Your vacation website should include an easy-to-use property search and availability tool, include visual elements, such as feature icons, to help them quickly identify which properties meet their needs, and include the option to include cross-selling listings to help them navigate to other properties that may be more suitable for them.
3. Use Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons
It’s a sad fact that most people visit a website without leaving any form of contact with the website owner. If your visitors are leaving without providing their contact details, you can only rely on re-marketing to re-engage with them. Liberally using call-to-action graphics and buttons is a powerful way to enable more prospects to engage commercially with your business.
4. Conversion technology
Ultimately, prospects are on your site to book a property. They expect a search engine to find what they’re looking for, real-time calendars to review availability, and the ability to book and pay. If your website doesn’t handle these processes seamlessly, it leads to ‘booking abandonment’. At 365villas, our websites include full featured availability and booking engines to make it simple for visitors to search and make reservations with you.
5. Attention to detail
This reflects the care that you invest in your properties and business. By ensuring your website is easy to navigate with detailed listings, photos, and information and that there are multiple ways for people to contact you, e.g., contact forms, social media, email, and by phone, you will maximise the potential for visitors to take that all important first step by contacting you.
