Being a Yes!Hotels member you are entitled to a free website critique. I’m the person who does it. I don’t profess to being an expert but I do have 12 years experience in building tourism related websites.
I break the critique into 4 stages:- First Impressions, Image Quality, SEO and Overall.
First Impressions.
As we all know first impressions really do count. Your website is often the first port of call that a potential guest makes when looking for accommodation in your area. Reports (and I’ve read more than a few) suggest that your potential guest will make his/her mind up about how suitable your accommodation is within 4 seconds. So it’s crucial in those first few seconds that you capture their attention and get them to linger…for longer on your website.
Your landing page needs to be neat, tidy, clean, aesthetically pleasing and informative.
The “landing page” is the page that Google (and for Google just take it as read that I mean any search engine) points to when it produces a result showing your site. this will usually be your index or home page.
Doing the critiques it was amazing how many poor quality images I saw on members front pages. If the main image of your property is poorly lit, out of focus, poorly detailed, too small to view easily then its not going to create a good first impression.
The layout is important too. Look at any newspaper. It publishes content in columns. There’s a reason for this…it’s easier to read and scan through. So don’t offer loads and loads of text going the full width of the browser window without breaking it up with an image or three.
Universities have done studies where they monitor viewers eyeball movements as they move across browser windows and how long before they hit the dreaded “back button”. Thats where I got the 4 seconds from. In general they glanced at images, glanced at bullet points (and this is where an At A Glance bullet box is useful) scanned through some text and lastly viewed the navigation area. At this stage they decide if they want to stay and read more or go back to the next one in Google’s list. So…make sure you are using the best possible images, listing all the advantages and benefits your accommodation provides in bullet points, has sufficient text and is neatly laid out with a clear and easy to follow navigation system.
Choose your colours carefully. In general you should avoid using light text on dark backgrounds. Choose colours that compliment each other.
Image Quality
In this digital age there really is no excuse for having poor images on your website. If the image isnt good – then re-take it. You don’t have to pay for the developing any more. Take the images on a bright sunny day or learn about the settings on your camera to get the most out of it. There’s tons of information on the internet that can help you do this. Consider paying a professional to take them for you. Even after you have taken what you consider is a good quality image it would probably benefit from some manipulation by adding a little saturation to the colour, or bringing out the mid-tones in the darker areas. Again there are lots of free tutorials on how to do this on the internet.
Search Engine Optimisation – SEO
Make sure you use a different title for each page. Make sure you use different meta tags also. The meta:description tag is the one that Google uses (mainly) to describe to the view what is on that page. Above all the best way you can optimise your website is to have bags of informative content. Long gone are the days when we could guarantee first place on Google (those were the days!!). Now we have to work a lot harder for Googlebot to notice us. If you have a smallish property with perhaps under 12 rooms then do a separate page for each room – with nice quality images (notice the plural of that) and list the facilities for each room. Any larger then at least do a separate page for each different room type. You MUST remember you’re not necessarily including the information for your viewer (I doubt many of you have read this far) but it is crucial for Googlebot. He’s very hungry and eats up information…and stores it for when its needed.
Again there’s tons of information on the internet on how to optimise your pages better – don’t be lazy – it is really worth your while putting effort into creating more content.
Overall
In this section of the critique I’ll be explaining what I think the overall rating is and what can be done to improve things. It takes me a full 30 minutes to do a full website critique. I don’t hold back…I tell you how I see it. It definitely isn’t meant to offend …so don’t take my comments to heart but accept them as constructive criticism.
Nobody got an excellent yet – and before you ask – I rate my own PERSONAL sites as fair to good – its definitely a case of do as I say not as I do. One thing I do know is that most of my PERSONAL sites work very well producing good results.
If you want a website critique (members only) then please email me office@blackpoolhotels.org
regards
Doug
