Home Page is always the most important page of any website. Your Home Page shows your professional essence, the appealing image of your product or services, your company’s operation scale and more.
In fact, your Home Page is the face of your company in the internet market.
Home Page is designed interactively with other pages scientifically; combine with other online promotional tools such as banner ads, keyword placement, email marketing, online customer relation and different transition to create a common business image in the mind of your prospects, your clients and your partnerships.
There is a great resource for Home page Optimizization in Tourism Marketing Forum. Click the link below to get a forum account to read this resources:
Below are design tips of a good Home Page for almost of tourism websites.
1)Catch the attention immediately
There is no place for a badly-designed Home Page in market share. In common, you just have 10-20 seconds to catch the visitors’ attention when they do researching for travel or room services information.
Why? The reasons are:
UN ugly Home Page shows your lack of professional business operation and creates a negative feeling in the mind of the surfers about your quality of your products services. Tourism is the business of invisible products; the visitors, therefore have to try to imagine how good your services are base on the visible things you have such as your facilities, your staff appearances, your reputation… if these things are beautiful, clean, ordered…it means your services is good to be used, and there is a contrary, too.
So, design the best Home Page as you can by yourself or hire a design professional do it for you. Costs for it maybe much but it’s always the best investment you’ve done.
2)Use the company theme
Your company must have a business theme in order to create a common image about your business activities.
A good theme distinguishes your business with the other.
A best theme often originates from your Unique Selling Position, and brings great advantage of marketing for your business.
………
In short, if you want do business for long time, create a theme at the beginning of operation, develop it as your business progress (in fact, both develop together), and when you’ve grown to be a rather large business, your theme will become the main strength in your brand building strategy.
A theme is a comprehensive sense of all aspect of your business, but the most seen is your company’s logo, slogan, typical image, typical color…do you have it? I hope you have, or should create it immediately, it is not late!
Now, integrate your company’s theme with your Home Page design, create a specific feeling in the mind of your visitors both online and offline anytime they see or contact with your business.
This will make the design process more easily, no need to choose a theme, you’ve already had it. Just design it, keep the theme but drop some small creative change to suit the design requirement; the online appearance, anyway, is something different from the real world. I think you also agree with me about this difference.
Remember to combine or integrate the live – operation of your marketing campaign between online and offline market. They support each other, and your theme is the main bone to create a united image. First point to success.
3)Give the profit right away
Your Home Page is always the first communication with your prospects. Therefore, show all your strength of your services right away, on the Home Page. Catch the mind of your website visitors. Do not bury the great benefits of your services on other pages.
It won’t work effectively.
Prospective travelers may or may not choose to visit your destination based on what they read on your website – usually just your Home Page. So tell prospective travelers that your destination or tour is safe, secure and fun to visit.
Show out your Unique Selling Position, what your services has while your competitors do not. Describe these comparative advantages in a manner of benefit your visitors; create a good difference in the mind of your prospects is one of the first reason to make them find more information about your services and it is a crucial factors in their buying decision.
If you have any kind of discount, coupon, free, surplus services, gift certification… Make it attract the eyes of your visitors immediately. Do not hide these promotional things in the sale page.
Something new such as events, festivals, new kind of services must be notified clearly. Tell the visitors about the benefits of the event, remind them to participate or check in before too long/ or out of vacancy.
The content of your Home Page is always new, exactly and locally. The picture must be local uniqueness and in best quality. Pictures of your visitors enjoying the benefit of your services enclosed with a good caption assure the great benefits are best effective. Use it.
4)Professionally and scientifically design
The Home Page leads to other page. It is the biggest crossroad of a site. There are many links to different pages or website’s section.
Therefore, scientifically design it. Do not make your visitors confuse with all the link text or image.
A good Home Page will have links to other pages which provides information about four core areas:
• How to get there (e.g., air travel, trail, bus, coach)
• Getting around (e.g., car or boat rental)
• Accommodation services
• Things to do (e.g., place to see, shopping, show, events)
These links should be easy to navigate and use. Please do not put any link to other site unless you want your visitors click on them, lose your sight and seldom return.
5)Call to action
Home Page should be the first page clearly tells the visitors what to do next to receive your special services or find out more information they want. A link to preservation page a short call to action text link should be placed attractively on your Home Page.
Remember that we do not know how many website the visitors have surfed before they reach our site. They maybe tired of surfing more and just want to find the right services supplier who creating a good impression enclose with some good promotional items to make the final choice. And we are prepared for them!
80% of all buying decision bases on the emotion. So after you have created a good impression on your services, then it is easier to lead your visitors naturally. A smart thing to do is put a link to your preservation page and call the visitor to book your services.
If we bury out link to preservation page after several other page, the emotion maybe reduces due to their distraction on these page content.
Follow these helpful steps in designing your Home Page to boost your website sell. Hope you enjoy this article and remember to read the other of mine.
********************
This article can be freely reprinted and distributed world widely as its content and author biography must keep intact.
There is a great resource for Tourism internet marketing in Tourism Marketing Forum. Click the link below to get a forum account to read this resources:
