Here’s a mistake many people make when creating a website …
… they’re sitting at their desktop computer or laptop, putting hours of hard work into creating the ideal website to promote their holiday rental online. Then once it’s complete, they start marketing it.
Sounds good so far.
Yet, unless they’ve already taken into account how their site will display on a mobile phone or tablet, they could be missing out on essential traffic – no matter how good it looks.
The importance of functionality
If you think of all the things that go into making a great website, functionality may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, this is actually one of the most important things to think about.
Take this example – you have a great website to help promote your holiday let. You’ve poured a lot of time and effort into it, and it looks sensational on your main desktop computer screen.
Now let’s say your perfect guest is looking to book a week away in the Lake District. Well that’s handy, because it’s exactly where your wonderful holiday let is located. Your property also has the right number of bedrooms and is dog-friendly – precisely what this person is looking for. And since you’re advertising a special offer, it’s a no-brainer to enquire further.
But … unfortunately they can’t. Well not easily anyway.
Why?
Because they’re looking at your site on their mobile phone, and your website isn’t mobile-friendly.
To make an enquiry they have to scroll from side-to-side to find the relevant menu item. Then they have to scroll around the page to try and complete the enquiry form – which isn’t easy.
So what inevitable happens is they get frustrated, give up and go elsewhere.
Could you be losing guests?
You can probably see how important it is to make sure your website is able to display properly no matter what device someone is using to view it.
Even if your website is user-friendly in every other way, if it falls down on this part you could lose a lot of potential bookings.
Experts say that more and more people are using their tablets and mobile phones to surf the internet in the future. Desktops could eventually become obsolete. Laptops are more popular now than in the past, but they still have large screens on which to view websites.
So if this is an area your website is falling down on, now is the time to do something about it.
Make sure you’re not losing out on potential guests because you don’t have a mobile-friendly holiday rental website.
Getting traffic isn’t the only issue you should be worried about anymore. You also have to make sure you appeal to people using all kinds of devices.
If you don’t, a portion of the traffic you do get, could be going to waste.
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