Your hotel’s website is often the first interaction potential guests have with your brand. However, a well-designed website can do more than just inform. It can inspire bookings, foster trust, and set the stage for an exceptional guest experience. The key to achieving this lies in user experience (UX) design. A hotel web design that’s intuitive, visually appealing and easy to navigate can make all the difference between a casual visitor and a confirmed reservation.
In this blog, we’ll explore 7 essential UX tips to help you create a hotel website that not only attracts visitors but converts them into loyal guests. The following strategies will elevate your hotel web design and set your property apart.
Related Read: The 5 Best Hotel Website Design Examples According to KIJO
What Does User Experience (UX) Mean?
UX, or user experience, refers to every aspect of a guest’s interaction with your hotel’s website. In hotel web design, a strong UX ensures that the visitor’s experience is seamless, engaging and reflective of your brand. A hotel website should be functional, easy to navigate and offer a meaningful experience that guides users effortlessly from browsing to booking.
Clear, intuitive navigation is essential for a hotel website to provide visitors with a smooth browsing experience. When it comes to showcasing the hotel’s main facilities, it’s important that the navigation highlights what makes the property stand out. A well-organised menu structure ensures users can quickly find what they need, which helps boost engagement and direct bookings. Here are key elements that hotel website navigation should include:
The booking engine your hotel uses should be fast, easy to use and require minimal steps. Ideally, it should also be in-house rather than a third-party system that takes you to a different website, like Booking.com for example. An in-house system bolsters a stronger sense of trust for users and ultimately feels more professional.
During the booking process, showcase the rooms with high-quality images and highlight the special features of each. This will help keep the users on track to completing their booking.
Users should also be allowed to filter by date, room type and price. Make sure the process is straightforward from start to confirmation and that there are no unnecessary distractions in your booking system design.
Invest in professional, high-resolution images and videos that showcase your hotel’s rooms, amenities and surroundings. Visuals help potential guests envision their stay, making them more likely to book.
A video header is a great way of enticing your user into the atmosphere of your hotel. A high-quality video that displays the special property’s unique features, the pool, the room facilities, the landscape and surroundings, and guests enjoying the hotel can immediately capture a user. Virtual tours or 360-degree images can enhance the user experience too.
KIJO Pro Tip: Keep in mind that high-quality visuals often come with larger file sizes, which can slow down your hotel’s website. To avoid this, compress your images to an optimal size without sacrificing its look and feel. If you have a WordPress website, we’d recommend the Imagify plugin which will do this for you.
Maintaining high visual standards is essential, especially in the luxury hotel market. To stay competitive, consider adding virtual tours or video walkthroughs of your facilities. These immersive elements offer potential guests a preview of your hotel, giving them a real sense of what to expect before they book.
Use strong, clear CTAs like “Book Now” or “Check Availability” prominently throughout the website. These buttons should stand out, be easy to find and guide users toward completing the booking process.
Related Read: The CTA Meaning, Examples & Why They’re Important
Have you ever booked a hotel without checking the Tripadvisor rating first? Keep your users on your pages by displaying guest reviews, awards, testimonials and ratings directly on your website. This helps build trust and credibility, as potential guests notoriously rely on the experiences of others to make booking decisions.
Implement personalisation options like geo-targeted content, special offers based on user behaviour or room recommendations based on browsing history. These tailored experiences make visitors feel more connected to your brand and help to encourage bookings.
Introduce animation to your hotel website design. Animation adds a sense of elegance and modernity that instantly grabs attention. Subtle entrance animations or interactive elements set the tone for the brand, conveying that the hotel offers not just a stay but an experience. Thoughtfully crafted animations reflect care and precision, reinforcing the idea that the hotel will provide a premium experience for guests. Animations also help to guide visitors through a website intuitively, making it easier to find information.
It’s essential for all modern websites to prioritise mobile responsiveness and accessibility, as these elements are crucial for delivering a great user experience. Not only do they enhance the overall UX of your site, but they also positively impact your search engine rankings on platforms like Google. With 95.9% of global users accessing the internet through mobile devices (Statista, August 2024), ensuring your hotel web design is responsive is a must to stay competitive with the top hotels in the industry.
Read up on KIJO’s 10 Guidelines for Responsive Website Design and ensure your hotel web design is optimised for mobile devices.
When it comes to accessibility, follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These will help you ensure your hotel web design meets the optimum accessibility requirements too.
The top hotels across the world are prioritising UX in their hotel web designs. You can see 5 of the best hotel web designs examples that are putting UX at the forefront here. This is helping their hotel websites get seen, interacted with, and converting website visitors into guests.
If you think your hotel’s web design could do with an experienced eye regarding its UX, contact the KIJO team today.
