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Three Barriers to Website Booking Conversion

The purpose of your website is to generate bookings. To do that it must convert a visit into an enquiry.

Unfortunately, many websites put up barriers, frustrating prospective clients and stopping them from making that booking. They want to go on safari, they are ready to give you their money but your website drove them to a competitor.

There are many barriers to booking conversion but here are three that commonly appear on safari websites.

1. Slow Load Times

Perhaps the most important barrier is slow website load times. People are impatient and will tend to abandon a site if it hasn’t loaded within three seconds.

If they abandon your site before it loads then you have zero chance to get a booking from that particular prospect.

There’s many things you can do to speed up your site, many of them quite technical. Two simple actions that anyone can do are:

  1. Optimise your images: Don’t upload a 4,000px wide image for an image that will display at a width of 500px. Optimise each image before you upload it, balancing file size with image quality.
  2. Invest in a good web host: Don’t skimp on web hosting. A cheap host might save you a couple of dollars but it will cost you much more in lost business.

2. Lackluster Images

For any tourism website, eye-catching images are critical.

Too many websites fail to use photos that really sell their safaris, instead using out of focus, small or just plain boring photographs. Worse, some tour operators don’t feature any photos at all on their tour itineraries.

Select photos that showcase your destination(s) and your safaris in action. You want people to be saying “I want to be doing that!”

Hire a professional photographer. Compare a website that utilises photos from a pro against another where an amateur has collected a random batch of snaps. The contrast is startling.

3. Grammatical & Spelling Errors

A study found that “59% of people would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or marketing material.”

So, more than half of prospective clients will desert your website if they see copy with poor grammar or spelling.

Spend time copywriting each page carefully and once you’re done, edit it and then edit it again.

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