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: