Web Development

Sarabi Tech helped a Resort Improve Their Website Conversion Rate by 55%

Background

Our client, a five-star luxury resort identified the need to be more competitive in the rapidly changing and innovative hospitality marketplace. They recognized that this would require a high level of customer engagement and retention in order to compete aggressively in the future. The organization anticipated that their biggest challenge would be customer retention. They needed to identify new procedures to create the foundation for a future built on rapid growth, innovation, and product leadership.

Challenge

The resort’s shareholders wanted…

• More bookings through their resort’s website, more brand awareness, and more sales.
• To increase their resorts website’s presence and make the most of its visitors.
• To reduce the fees, they pay to third party travel sites for bookings, and to encourage guests to book from their website, instead.

Solutions

Sarabi Tech suggested they…

• Make better use of the resort’s booking engine.
• Address usability and testing page enhancements to improve sales.
• Add sales elements on the website to improve the sales funnel, and add new content to the homepage and other vital areas that would enhance engagement.
• Work directly with the resort’s booking engine provider to improve features.
• Work directly with the reservation staff and manager of the resort to increase bookings.
• Address the site’s SEO content.
• Redesign the online advertising pay-per-click campaign.

First, we accessed the website’s analytical data to determine how much traffic was coming to the site, what levels of contact were made, what and how many bookings were generated, where people went when they visited, how long they were there, and where they left. All of this information helped to paint a picture of the site’s performance. Sarabi Tech then reviewed the site for usability issues, friction, and confusion points, then looked for gaps in the website where we could enhance value, and studied the site’s flow of information. Our major challenge was to make the website more interactive and focused – to get people moving into the booking engine as quickly as possible from the website itself; once there, the likelihood that a booking would be made was very high. Sarabi Tech proposed a new layout for the home page, then tried and tested different versions to find which one most effectively raised guests’ engagement levels with the site and booking engine. The next step was to address the pages that were visited the most – providing feedback to the resort on what those pages were lacking. We also added new tracking systems to monitor visitors and conversions levels, allowing us to track which parts of the pages people were more interested in, what keyword phrases were bringing in sales and customers, and other valuable information.

Finally, we added clearer navigation to aid the user experience, including new contact forms, maps and directions. Sarabi Tech rolled out these changes over the course of a few months, analyzing and tweaking along the way to enhance the overall package.

Results:

• 55% increase in online conversions
• Site ranked 1^st on search engines
• By focusing on both the conversions and the traffic, and creating an alignment between search and usability, business from their online bookings increased – on average – by 20% month-on-month.