Maintaining customer confidence in a travel website

Travel consumers of all ages now use the web as their primary tool for researching their holiday, with a growing proportion showing a preference for booking online. When it comes to inspiring your customers your website is absolutely crucial!

Clear communication

When potential customers first land on your website, they will likely have three questions on their mind:

1. What is this site offering?
2. Is it relevant to me?
3. Does this look like a reputable company?

If your website ticks these boxes there is a good chance consumers will take the time to engage with you and explore what you have on offer.

A simple proposition
Consumers should be able to deduce what your proposition is in a matter of seconds. The best way to achieve this is to combine short, explicit headline messaging with examples of the products on offer.

First impressions
The first few seconds are not only vital with regards to communication, but for establishing confidence. A visually appealing, well conceived website that displays attention to detail immediately speaks volumes about your business.

Ease of use

Navigation
Users dislike having to guess where a link will take them. Navigation is best approached as an exercise in efficient categorisation of content and should be clear, simple and intuitive, with links on the page immediately obvious to the user.

Browsing
Some companies make the mistake of assuming that people will use their website in a predictable, linear way, with a one way journey beginning on the homepage and ending with a booking enquiry. In reality, people browse content as much in a sideways manner as a vertical manner and may click across products and across categories.

The buying process

When booking a holiday, people move through a number of identifiable stages. During this process, their requirements will change.

Inspiration and research
Initially, consumers are looking for inspiration and their requirements may not be fully defined. As their preferences start to become defined, they will move into research mode. Good quality destination content then becomes important, as do featured products, recommendations and reviews.

Evaluation of choice
It is important to remember that very few people will book the first holiday they see. Instead, they will view a number of holidays and may well undertake a number of different searches. By ensuring that your site serves potential customers at all stages of the buying process, you have the ability to fix yourself firmly in their minds early on.

Conversion

Encouraging people to book on your website is about so much more than big ‘book now’ buttons, strong calls to action and standout prices, though they all have their place. Indeed, the inability to find clear pricing information is one of the number one frustrations for customers.