In the past, travelers would meet face-to-face with a travel agent to reserve their trips and accommodations. Today, most trips are booked online, which is why it’s critical for your travel business to have a well-optimized website to attract more customers. 

Too often, however, tour companies make website mistakes that can hurt their trustworthiness and bottom line. Here are some of the most common mistakes you can avoid with the help of a tour company marketing team. 

 7 Tour Company Website Mistakes To Avoid 

1. Using Boring Visuals

Visual content is effective in digital marketing because it helps people process, understand, and retain your message more quickly. As such, you can’t afford to overlook this essential element on your website. Use visual content to attract more customers by giving them a preview of what they’ll experience with you. Show them highlights of your activities and the best views that they will see during their tour.

Avoid using stock photos since there’s a good chance that other travel websites will use them too. You also risk using the wrong photo for a specific destination, which misrepresents your offering. Instead, consider hiring a professional photographer to take eye-catching images from the tour. These photos can make your site look more professional, and you can even post them on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to generate engagement and shares among potential customers. But if getting a photographer isn’t feasible, you’ll still be better off using photos you’ve snapped on your own. Going this route will help bring a more genuine, organic feel to your website, especially if you feature customers in the photos.

2. No Online Reservation Options

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While captivating images will draw people to your site, you’ll still need to get them to take the next step by booking a tour with you. Tour companies that have a booking option on their website convert more sales than ones that don’t. While having a booking option may seem like a no-brainer, it’s a mistake that many tour companies make, causing potential customers to move to other sites with easier ways to make reservations.

A tour company marketing team with web design and development experience can ensure that your website not only has an online booking feature but one that’s easy to navigate, too. When your visitors know that it’s easy to book with you, they’re more likely to come back for seconds. 

3. Outdated Content

Regularly updating your travel website with new content will help you keep the attention of existing customers and pique the interest of new ones. But your content should also tell your customers what new tours and offerings are available.

For example, if a small cruise line has just finished its Caribbean cruise and will have one in the Mediterranean soon, then the content should start focusing on the upcoming trip. You could feature images from the port and landmark destinations in the region–perhaps Malta or the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. If your home page shows your tour schedules, make sure to take down the ones that are already over to reduce confusion. 

4. Sparse Tour Details

Having separate web pages for each tour helps guests take their pick of what trip they want to join. However, you also have to make sure that your pages have the answers they’re looking for. Aside from the itinerary, your tour company marketing staff can address questions such as: 

  • What is the culture like at the destination?
  • What activities are there to do? 
  • What modes of transportation will be used?
  • What are the accommodations like? 

When you’re able to provide comprehensive information to your site visitors, you lower the chances of them going to another company’s website for information and eventually booking with them instead.

5. No Mobile Optimization

People today can use their smartphones for virtually everything, including booking trips. If you want more people to book a tour with you, they should have the option to do it on their phones. You don’t necessarily need to create an app for it, though. You can make things more convenient for them by optimizing your website for mobile use.

Mobile optimization is when you configure your website to be user-friendly on mobile devices. That means making the site easy to read, navigate, and have a fast loading speed even on a smartphone or tablet. The buttons should also be easier to click on for fingers. 

If potential customers have a hard time browsing your website, they’ll search for tours elsewhere.

6. Ignoring Website Analytics

Analytics tools like Google Analytics are low-cost but have all the features to help your tour marketing experts better understand your website’s performance and your audience. They can give you more insight into data such as:

  • Number of website visitors
  • The time people spend on the site
  • How visitors interact with your site
  • Your paid ads’ impact your site traffic
  • What search terms are being used 

All of these lets you know what you need to improve with your online marketing to make your guests’ experience better. If people are satisfied with your website, they’re not likely to try and book elsewhere. 

7. Insecure Site

While an online booking option is a must-have on your website, it’s also crucial to make sure that your site is secure enough to handle the sensitive data that gets passed during the reservation process, like credit card information or passwords. Otherwise, your customer’s data will be easy for hackers to get a hold of. 

One of the first things you can do is to have an SSL or Secure Socket Layer certificate. An SSL ensures that any data transferred in your site is encrypted, meaning only those who are authorized can have access to it. Having an SSL certificate is also beneficial to your web page rankings on Google. This is because Google will check if your site has one, and will warn users to stay away if it doesn’t.

 Customers will trust your company more if they see that you’ve invested in your website’s security, and therefore theirs as well. 

If you have problems with improving your travel business’s website and getting more customers, don’t hesitate to ask SRJ Digital for help. Their team specializes in tour company marketing as well as finance, healthcare, real estate, and more. They provide organic solutions for your company with services such as website design, SEO, and lead generation. Feel free to book a free consultation online or call their experts at (202) 738-1207 today.