Online marketing for vacation rentals. We will not stop talking about this, because we believe it is one of the most important ways to make your business grow. Whatever you do online should (and will) eventually be connected to your website.
Our goal is to help all our clients understand how their website can be the single best tool for transforming their vacation rental business.
What story does your website tell? 50/50 chance your website is the first impression of your business.
Within seven seconds of meeting someone new, they’ve already judged you. Maybe they’ve developed an opinion about you based on your appearance or facial expressions, or you could just remind them of someone who is not exactly their friend.
In a similar way, people judge your business by looking at your website. If it isn’t branded in an attractive way or its visitor experience is confusing, your users won’t take the time to learn about your product (even if it fits their solution).
Take 5 minutes and be honest with yourself or you can even ask a friend for their opinion. What does your website say about your business?
- I’m OK with mediocrity
- I do the bare minimum
- I don’t invest in business
- I don’t care about you
Or
- First impressions matter to me
- I take pride in my business
- I go the extra mile
- I invest in business
- I think about the small stuff
- I care about you!
Don’t worry if you think you’re in the first block. In fact, admitting you might be telling the wrong story can help you to change the way you communicate with your clients. We would like to be a small part of your journey by posing the following question:
How can I substantially improve my vacation rental website design and user experience?
It’s very important to understand that a beautiful concept must be complemented with great content. Give the potential client the right information displayed in a user-friendly design. Web smart guests want so much more than photos of a property and a list of amenities.
They want, and expect, a pre-vacation experience (what to see and what to do, host recommendations, itinerary planning, etc) as well as the vacation itself. A vacation rental website should help provide both.
By working on these key points, your website will tell a completely different story and your future clients will thank you for it:
Structure: Stick to a clean design: clear, organized rental information and clear calls to action. Keep navigation simple. Users want to find the information they are looking for in the first 5 seconds of accessing your website. If after this first scan they are still interested, they will continue with a more detailed navigation.
On your home page, present clearly labelled sections so that site visitors know exactly how to proceed to get their questions answered.
Branding: Your brand identity is the summation of your brand’s value and what it has to offer, all represented by its visual components (logo, name, colors, fonts).
Your brand identity strategy is your chance to color perceptions of your brand and to tell the world what you have to offer.
Pictures: Large and beautiful images are what sell a property. You want your product to present itself as well as possible, and good-looking photos are a key to that.
You obviously need to balance photo quality against performance and make sure that your photos are optimized for mobile devices as well.
Mobile friendly: This is no longer an option. Many studies confirm that the relentless growth of mobile browsing and mobile booking in the travel industry continues apace. Therefore, optimizing your website for mobile devices is crucial.
Real-time updates: A website is made to be always updated with fresh content. This starts with your availability calendar, rates, etc. If this information is not live, you are not doing something right.
Sync your calendars in real-time and use a CMS so that you can update pages whenever you like. Integrating your site with your property management software is even better.
About us page: Give them some insight about you and how you take care of your guest. Personal approach of vacation rentals is still one of the major advantages over other forms of accommodation.
Calls to action
Once you have captured your visitor attention, you need to convert them. Ensure the tech is solid and supports this. These a few ideas for direct conversions that you can easily facilitate in your website with our help:
Direct messages and enquiries.
A real-time payment method is becoming more important in a more cashless society. Make sure you have one, it gives credibility.
Secure payments: remind guests that paying by credit card is secure. It is worth reinforcing this.
Add a phone number, again it reinforces the warmth and secure aspects of dealing with you.
Ok, I get it. How do I get started?
At 365villas, we understand that changing a website can be hard work, expensive and, most of the times, you don’t know if you are going to like the result, so this can make for an uncertain transition.
For these reasons, we will offer a different approach. We do this by making your project fun, risk-free, and cost-effective guaranteed. We help you comprehensively in all these ways and more:
Build your website in days. Yes, this is really is possible with our solutions and support.
Get started for free. Pay only after 2 weeks and only if you’re fully satisfied. If you don’t like the result, you’re free to cancel and continue with your current site. Your day to day operations will not be affected.
Beautiful designs, a built-in CMS integrated software. We did all the hard work already to make it very easy for you and your future guests to have world-class web experiences.
Integrated search engines, online booking and real-time availability are all included as standard.Connect with your 365 software and magic! Everything just works and all your channels are connected to your website.
Integrated payment solutions provide your guests a quick and easy way to pay in the knowledge that their transaction is secure and their interests are protected.
Commission? Who said commission? We don’t charge a single cent for your bookings! That is your business and we want you to keep the 100% of it.
Click here, send us an inquiry and receive a 2-months free website trial. We know that after you try one of our solutions, you’ll want to keep it.