Optimising tourism websites for conversion: our client highlights

The travel and tourism industry faces unique challenges when it comes to conversion rate optimisation. In the last few years, not only has this industry faced disruption through COVID travel restrictions, but also digital transformation - from the tarmac to the mobile. 

In the competitive landscape of tourism, a well-optimised website can be a powerful tool for driving conversions and enhancing digital presence.

At Vivo, we’ve worked with a number of clients that push the boundaries of an ordinary travel experience, from relaxed luxury to outback adventures - businesses with an ambition to innovate and deliver value to their guests.

In this feature article, we explore some of our projects and how our approach to digital strategy has enabled our clients to streamline their offering and service their customers in new ways, offering unparalleled digitally-enabled experiences. 

Travel is typically a high-cost and high-consideration purchase, with customers often taking their time to research options before making a decision. This means that websites need to guide visitors effectively through information rather than just focusing on purchasing funnels, and sell the product or service through high quality visual content. 

Engaging and relevant visuals can be leveraged for effective signposting which can enhance the user experience through intuitive wayfinding, while also highlighting the depth and breadth of the offering. 

Tourism and resort websites may also have multiple conversion goals, such as booking accommodations, purchasing flights, signing up for tours and events or creating user accounts. With a wide range of potential CTAs, an approach to this sort of website is vastly different to typical eCommerce or brochure sites.

Seasonal fluctuations can also affect conversion rates throughout the year, with the travel industry experiencing seasonal peaks and troughs depending on trends and seasonal travel.

At Vivo Group, we understand these industry-specific challenges and trends, and help businesses build tourism websites with strategies that improve conversion rates and drive growth in a competitive market. 

As part of our digital strategy, we focus on the following areas.

As part of our digital strategy, we focus on the following areas.

Visual appeal

The use of high-quality assets cannot go understated. Images and even better, videos, help visitors envision their experience at your resort or event.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, even more so when the digital experience of your website invites and appeals to your customers and their sensibilities through ease of use and enticing design.

Ensuring that high-quality assets do not come at the cost of website performance is another major consideration, which can be addressed through specialised tools and the latest technology to ensure visuals are effectively optimised. 

User-friendly design 

We aim to deliver an exceptional user experience crafted from strategy and translated into accessible, intuitive content layouts, with a mobile-responsive design to ensure seamless engagement across all devices. 

An easy-to-use website matters more than online reviews or even loyalty programs to high-value travellers, according to Think with Google. 

The design of your website should be a reflection of the ideal experience you want your guests and visitors to have, and should be a seamless extension of your brand presence.

Mobile-optimised and responsive layouts

A growing number of customers use their mobile devices to browse and learn more information about accommodation and events before purchasing. Research shows that 48% of mobile users are comfortable researching, planning and booking an entire trip to a new travel destination using only their smartphone. 

In general, nearly 57% of web page visits across the world were made from mobile devices by the end of 2021. 

The prevalence of mobile devices and browsing isn’t news to anyone, many websites that were built even just a few years ago, if not maintained and continuously optimised, can become outdated quickly in an ever changing, fast-moving digital environment. 

These statistics indicate a general trend towards mobile browsing, which likely extends to purchasing behaviour as well. 

Serving personalised content

Tailoring content and recommendations based on user preferences is also not a new development, but is a key tactic in converting leads into customers.

Successful implementations of personalisation can analyse user behaviour to enhance the visitor experience, serving recommendations based on search history, user characteristics, demographics and location. This can be realised in many different forms - from AI-driven approaches to customised booking experiences or mobile apps that provide personalised itineraries and real-time updates based on user preferences.

Interestingly, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. An increasing appetite for personalised content and recommendations for businesses that implement these can help potential customers make purchasing decisions. 
 

Over the years, we’ve seen clients through end-to-end website development projects to continuous maintenance and user experience optimisation, delivering conversion results and happy customers. 

Take a look at our client project highlights, including the integrations, technology and design approaches we use to deliver high converting websites and visually appealing sites for our clients. 

Highlights

• Integration with the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) to pull product data 
• Integration with Bookeasy widget to facilitate on-site bookings 
• Custom itinerary builder
• Custom post types

We established our partnership in 2022 with the rebuild of their Visit Fraser Coast website. Since then, we have completed four major projects and continue to work closely with the team. 

Fraser Coast and K’gari (Fraser Island) are renowned natural tourist destinations, celebrated for their stunning landscapes that leave a lasting impression. In our site redesign, visuals played a pivotal role in conveying the breadth of experiences the Coast offers. We strategically employed CTAs to guide users through clear paths to conversion, guided by meticulous user journey mapping.

Content consolidation was a focal point, as existing resources from FCTE were rich but not fully optimised for the web. Through a comprehensive audit, we structured the new website to maximise the use of this content. Integration with ATDW data enabled us to populate product pages, ensuring a robust representation of local tourism operators while creating a single source of truth to improve the ease of listing management for both operators and the FCTE team.  

Pulling large amounts of data via API integration can sometimes lead to compromised site speeds if not implemented efficiently. To address this, we created a custom Product post type to store the product data from ATDW within the content management system. This reduced the need for multiple API calls to display accurate product information on the front end, and instead handling this via a daily data sync. 

A custom itinerary builder, powered by ATDW, provided users with a portal to log in and manage their itineraries, enhancing engagement. To drive conversions, we seamlessly integrated Bookeasy, facilitating on-site tourism operator bookings and reducing the number of steps required to convert.

Efficiency in content management was paramount, achieved through a flexible custom page builder. This tool empowers marketing teams and administrators to effortlessly create landing pages and customise content, ensuring autonomy and maximising efficiency.

Highlights

• SevenRooms and Synxis integration for restaurant and accommodation booking
• Stripe integration for online payments 
• Responsive website design
   

We’ve worked with Spicers Retreats in an established partnership since 2017 and have completed eight major projects to date. The brand exemplifies 'relaxed luxury' in stunning natural settings, to experience the natural beauty of the resorts’ wonderful locations in subtle and understated luxury. We translated this unique brand promise into a digital environment by creating a highly branded, user-friendly experience for their main customer website.

Our approach prioritised clear conversion paths through strategic use of CTAs and user experience design, while communicating a broad offering by organising content in a way that enables users to easily navigate through the site. At the same time, we maintained website performance with a rich media library, all while adapting to different mobile devices.

We ensured seamless integration with booking platforms like SevenRooms and Synxis, allowing users to easily book restaurants and accommodation reservations. We also custom-developed a gift card website with Stripe integration to allow customers to purchase gift cards for their loved ones across all retreats and restaurants.

Highlights

• Cloudflare for high-quality image optimisation
• Integration with the ATDW to pull product data

In 2020, we partnered with Southern Queensland Country Tourism (SQCT) to develop a website and member portal aimed at driving commercial growth and generating new revenue streams. We introduced an affiliate model and operator-facing portal, creating a robust digital asset for the region's tourism industry. 

An integration with ATDW allowed for dynamic product information updates on the website, increasing efficiency for both operators and SQCT. We also organised content through a strategic information architecture design to create a more intuitive user experience for different customers that preempts the needs of SQCT’s key audiences. 

We implemented Cloudflare to optimise high-quality imagery, crucial for enhancing user experience on tourism websites. We implement Cloudflare on all of the websites that we build, as it dynamically resizes and optimises images, ensuring they display perfectly on any device without affecting site speed.

Highlights 

• Migration to our recommended hosting partner, Platform.sh 
• Major website theme upgrade
• Integration with ATDW to pull product data, moving away from using Bookeasy as the source for product data 
   

Previously working with an agency that was no longer meeting their needs, in 2023 Tourism Whitsundays approached us to take over the hosting and ongoing maintenance of their public-facing website with an appetite to make key enhancements to the user experience and performance of the site.

Involving an initial code review, we successfully migrated the site to Platform.sh, leading to significant site speed increases. The asset was tested in a staging environment prior to deployment and we worked closely with the team to ensure the site functioned exactly as it did before the migration.

From there, we were able to execute our first major project through a website redesign, with the goal being to refresh the look and feel while retaining back end functionality. Given the complex nature of the work, we undertook rigorous testing on desktop and mobile. The result led to extremely positive feedback from both stakeholders and members. 

We now collaborate with the team in an ongoing capacity, performing weekly security maintenance and providing ongoing support for minor content updates, as well as strategic guidance on new projects.

Most recently, we collaborated with the team to undertake a significant integration project, moving away from using Bookeasy as the source of product data, and integrating with ATDW instead to dynamically pull product information while still retaining Bookeasy’s widget to facilitate booking functionality.  

With a history of building long standing relationships with national tourism and experience providers, we’ve developed an expertise in crafting conversion-driven, impactful and beautiful tourism websites.

Contact us today to build, update or reimagine your hotel, resort or tourism website.