It’s common to assume that everyone uses websites just like you do, which can’t be further from the truth. Do you use websites like your children do? Or your parents?
It also depends on where someone is at in their planning, as your potential guest moves through various phases of the process. The more expensive your offering, the longer this process will be.
Fortunately, it’s not that hard to cater for each visitor type. Let’s dive right in.
Researchers
Most people, once they know they’re going on holiday, will enjoy browsing around the internet trying to find amazing looking experiences to have.
At this point, they’re trying to find the things that truly stand out. For this group, the first 5 seconds on your website means EVERYTHING.
There’s 5 make or break factors in the first 5 seconds:
- Who are you
- Why choose you
- Whether your site works on mobile
- If your site loads fast
- If your site is attractive
If you fail at any of this, your website visitor will just close the site and not even thinking about it again.
This is where people are getting a feel for your business. Each tour should be neatly summarized in bullet points at the top of each description so that people can get a feel for what the tour or activity is without wading through paragraphs of information.
If you’re successful, they’ll probably make a note to come back to you.
Shortlisters
When someone’s shortlisting, they’re deciding who and what will get one of the precious days of their holiday.
Do they really want to go rafting, or do they want to do a Segway tour? Now is the time for you to CONVINCE them.
This is when people begin to pay more attention to the details in the content of your website, such as your ‘About’ page, which needs to be an interesting look at your story, your testimonials, the things you do and don’t provide, and the exact places you visit.
This is where you need a super detailed description of all of your offerings and loads of photos for people to look at.
Answer as many potential questions as possible!
Final Decision
Now it’s time for someone to book. Do you offer instant online booking and confirmation? If not, why not? There’s a chance that they won’t even bother to try to book with you, or just as bad, they’ll find someone else who DOES offer instant bookings while they wait for you to respond.
This is when people feel most nervous, as they are actually committing to going with you and no one else. This is when they need to see comforting reminders that they are making the right decision and ALSO feel a push – a sense of urgency to book.
Those little things matter, but the most important thing is to make the booking process as quick and easy as possible so people can’t change their mind.
Last Minute Planners
Then, of course, there’s the people who go through this whole process in 30 minutes and want to do a tour the next day.
This is when your website truly gets tested! An interesting side effect of having a great website is your number of last minute bookings tends to go up in a big way. It’s because people don’t have the time to use your website from 2011 that isn’t optimized for mobile. They’re sitting in their hotel room on their iPhones, and their internet is slow – so those first 5 seconds? They’re everything!
That wraps up this video.
I hope you’ve got a great website which serves you, but if you don’t, that’s why TourismTiger exists. Get in touch with us, and we’ll help you out.
Just before I close this video, make sure to download your free chapter from my book Sell More Tours. This chapter has a bunch of information to make your TripAdvisor experience much more successful.
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