Making your hotel or guest house website money making mediums is cool. Isn’t it? In today’s modern world a website is the face of any business.

You cannot avoid the fact at all. A website can help your hotel or guest house to increase revenue by a substantial percentage. Only if you know the tips to promote your hotel or guest house online, you would have the idea of how important a website is. However, having a website alone isn’t enough.

You need to focus on multiple factors to make sure your website is a revenue-generating medium for your hotel (or guest house). A hotel’s website’s strong presence alone can help existing and prospective guests to find you online without any frustration.

Here Guestkor Pakistan has listed 12 important factors which can improve your website irrespective of the fact you are a small and cheap hotel or a guest house in a remote area. Let us begin! Website Design And Color Combinations Marketing professionals have been emphasizing about the existence of websites.

Great website design can help in multiple ways for example: A better impression of your hotel creating a decent brand image Better memorable than other others Higher engagement rate A great website will have great and suitable color combinations. Check out the website of Dreamworld Karachi which is generally remembered for recreational activities.

Recreational activities are to make one feel cool and calm. And that is why Dreamworld has chosen Blue color for their website. Make sure your hotel website design and colors present a true picture of your hotel. For example, if you own a hotel in Naran or a guest house in Islamabad, adding green colors to your site can be suitable. Just in case you are a luxurious top hotel in Islamabad green might not be suitable. Combination of Black with white might give an appropriate presentation.

Brainstorm and search for what is suitable for you! Attention Grabbing Images Of Your Hotel or Guest House Interior and Exterior What can be the most convincing factor for website visitors to book your hotel room? Rates, Facilities, Images of your hotel? Most probably all of these! But images are something which shows how your hotel exactly looks? Check out Heritage Luxury Suites Lahore picture gallery on their site.

They are a good example of images on the website. Tip: In case you have a hotel in Hunza or Gilgit like places, you might not be able to share luxurious interior images however you can share a lot of images showing how the exterior looks from inside your hotel rooms.

A lot of website visitors would love to book your hotel to experience the magnificent exterior. Appropriate And Purposeful Content So why is someone visiting your hotel’s website? Most probably he is planning to book a room and is looking for information for example room rates, facilities provided in a form of Wi-Fi, complimentary meal/breakfast, parking facility, etc. This is why appropriate content is extremely important. Make sure your content is simple, informative, not exaggerated. In addition, all information must be under suitable categories.

Tip: Content always doesn’t mean text-based content. You can add images and videos as well as providing information about your hotel or guest house. You can inform website visitors about hotel room rates, facilities and deal through images, videos, text or a combination of all these three types of content.

Diversified content may increase the engagement level resulting in higher revenue! Appropriate Navigation for Website Visitors So many of you might be thinking why Navigation is important? Let me put up a situation.

Have you ever been invited at dinner by someone for the first time and you failed to reach the exact address? Maybe because there were no signboards and directions! Seems quite common in Pakistan! Isn’t it? Same goes for website visitors. When they drop in any website, they have no clue where to go for a certain type of information. Imagine if they have to contact you but the “contact us” page or section is either missing or below the fold. A better option would be to have a “contact us” button on top.

This will help the visitor to contact you easily for room booking etc. If you see Ramada Plaza Karachi‘s website you will see the contact us details above the fold. This will certainly help the website visitor to contact them ASAP. Another good example is of Avari Hotel Lahore website which has a great navigation structure providing maximum information in a decent sequential manner. These kind of navigational structures are effective in revenue generating. Tip: Make sure the website navigation structure is convenient enough for visitors to explore your website.

This will improve engagement, possibilities of room bookings in your hotel or guest house. Search Option on Your Hotel Website Why a search option is important for your website? Well, the answer is linked with the proper navigation structure point. As per the above assumption where you were invited on dinner and you failed to reach the correct address, how would you get help to reach at the desired address? The answer is, most probably by asking for directions from a local who has been residing there for some time. A website site search section works in the same manner for your website visitor. If they fail to get information about your hotel, or room rates, or facilities you offer, they can type and get the exact information thought search section.

That is why the search option is highly important for your hotel’s or guest house website. Tip: To add the search bar on your website on top right as it is the global standard to place a search bar on a website. Site Map For SEO of Your Website Here comes a little difficult part. Search engine optimization and related technicalities. We will not discuss these technicalities here. Let us keep it simple. Search engine optimization is a set of techniques which is used to bring your website on top on search engine results with certain targeted keywords. Sitemaps are structured maps or directions for search engines to crawl your website.

The moment you are getting your website built, ask your web developer to create and add a sitemap to your website. Live Chat Support On Your Site Live chat support system is integrated software which helps the website visitors to interact with the CS department directly to get information and get issues resolved. Live chat support system is generally suitable for 5-star hotels like Serena Hotel, Ramada Hotel Islamabad or Hospitality Inn Lahore.

Small hotels can install live chat support system in their websites but this might be costly and an added expense for them. Tip: In case of being a small hotel estimate the monthly web traffic and valid bookings you get through the website directly. If the numbers are considerable you should integrate a live chat support system on your website. Integrate Social Media Sharing Buttons on Your Hotel Website Social media platforms are highly active today. In Pakistan, Facebook is the most active social media platform with 20-25 million active users (Facebook Audience Insight). Some of the interesting Facebook facts in Pakistani perspective are: Fashion, Beauty, Electronics, Telecom, and FMCG are the top 5 industries with the highest number of fans respectively Top devoted pages are related to telecom companies Lahore and Karachi have the highest number of active users with 22% and 19% respective as of publishing date.

That means if a major chunk of customers of your hotel (or guest house) is coming from Lahore or Karachi, you need to have social media buttons integrated to your website. Tip: Do not forget people love sharing good content. To create and upload good content on your site and make it easy to share. Hotels in places like Murree, Kaghan, etc. can benefit a lot by uploading highly attractive images of beautiful sceneries of their surroundings.

Add A “Call To Action” To Website’s Landing Pages In simple marketing terms, a call to action is an instruction to invite the web site visitors for immediate action. Whenever a visitor drops on your website on any specific page, you should add a suitable call to action to convert the visitor to an upgraded level. For example, if a visitor is checking out room rates on the hotel website, it means he is in a phase of making the decision to book a room. A call to action to “book a room” will pull him one step further to take an initiative by clicking the call to action button. A good example is of Guestkor Pakistan website where we have added “” call to action on hotels in Muzaffarabad page. Tip: Do try different contrast colors to see which call to action button grabs more attention and clicks.

The white area around the “call to action” button is more suitable and suggested by experts. Web Browser Compatibility For All kind of Internet Users One of the most common and overlooked phenomena in Pakistan, “making your website friendly for all web browsers”.

Again questioning “Why”? Let us look at some interesting stats. Google Chrome has the highest market share with 65.79% as of 2014 news Firefox ranks second in the category with a 23.23% share in 2014 Internet Explorer is 3rd in the category with 5.74% share Opera ranks 4th in the list with 3.7% share This means that you cannot even avoid Opera users who have the lowest share here. 3.7% can be a substantial number and a huge potential market alone. So far we haven’t even discussed mobile users which may use multiple different web browsers.

Tip: Do not overlook web browser compatibility for maximum web browsers. Only because you are using a popular browser like Chrome doesn’t mean everyone is using Chrome. Mobile Friendly Website For Your Hotel Or Guest House A mobile-friendly website is key to generating higher revenue today.

After the launch of 3G/4G in Pakistan, a sufficient amount of internet users have shifted to mobiles and surfing online via mobiles, tablets and related mediums.

Here are some interesting facts and figures about mobile and smartphone users in Pakistan It is estimated that by the end of 2016, there will be 40 million smartphone users in Pakistan Till July 2015, there were 14.6 million 3G and 4G mobile phone users By 2019, 3G/4G subscribers are expected to reach till 110 million Till September 2015 monthly growth rate of 3G/4G subscribers was 14.43% These facts clearly emphasize on having a mobile-friendly website.

This will enable a substantial amount of internet users to browse your site through smartphones. Conclusion A website is one of the most important mediums for generating revenue today. However, you need to focus on the important elements of the websites until you reach optimal revenue-generating a point.

Above listed elements are the key elements which can improve your website’s performance in revenue generation. If you have any other tip for hotel (or guest house) website improvement, do share with us!