travel tech insights

The Web can be a magical place: your company launches its website and over the course of weeks and months transactions begin to take place with people you’ve never heard of, from places you’ve never been. Soon you find yourself spending long hours exploring ways to build site traffic: SEO concepts and terms from Google analytics become a familiar part of your vocabulary. After months of steady effort momentum builds and a steady upward trend emerges. But not so for sales; revenue consistently lags behind projections. An inbound marketing firm is brought in and reports the conversion rate for website traffic is 1.5% - and calls it good news because it’s so close to the travel industry average of 1.6%. It sure doesn’t seem like good news, does it?

The benefits of a responsive travel website are so compelling there’s no point in even trying to make the case companies in the travel industry can succeed without one. No doubt some are trying, but they’ve put themselves in roughly the same position as a brick-and-mortar store operating with inconvenient parking and accepting just one type of credit card. Perhaps some succeed in the short term, but those companies suffer an economic loss from missed profits. Since a website with responsive design is one that recognizes a visitor’s device and changes page configurations for best viewing, it stands to reason a nonresponsive site can never achieve the same user experience.

If your travel booking website has abandonment issues, you’re in good company: according to a recent SaleCycle survey, 81% of visitors to travel industry websites left without completing their booking activity.  With no similar surveys reporting contradictory findings, having to live with a high percentage of abandoned online bookings appear to be an inescapable reality for the foreseeable future. You’re also in good company if you find yourself asking, “Isn’t there any good news on this subject?” 

10 things good to know for your Online Travel Agency:

What is the difference between an effective website and one that is not? Here are 10 things you should consider in order to drive traffic and maximize your conversion rate, while not compromising your integrity.