A travel website is a great way to promote your business and attract new customers. By creating a website, you can list all of the services and products that you offer, as well as your pricing information. However, while a luxury travel website design can help you enhance your online presence and set a strong foundation for business growth, a poor travel website design will frustrate your potential customers and lead to negative first impressions about your travel agency. Luckily, you can easily avoid the second scenario by following the best travel industry web design practices.
In this article, our web design agency in Chicago will give you travel website design examples and tips and tricks that can help you build a high-converting tourism website.
Table of Contents
- How does tourism website design differ from other niches?
- What makes a good travel website?
- How to Create Your Own Travel Website
- 6 Tips and tricks for inspiring travel website design
- Get in touch
How does tourism website design differ from other niches?
A travel agency website can be designed in a number of ways, but what makes it different from web designs for other niches is that it needs to be built with the specific requirements of the travel industry in mind. To create a luxury travel website design that will support your travel agency’s digital marketing efforts across different channels, you need to design a unique user experience for people interested in traveling. Besides implementing high-quality visuals, you need to test the functionality of every element on your tourism website. Since many people will also access your travel website during their trips, you need to ensure that it functions perfectly on mobile devices.
Compared to other niches, tourism website design also needs to contain additional features tourists might find helpful, such as:
- Interactive maps
- Tour guides
- Travel Planning tools
- Secure booking systems
- Multiple payment options
Features based on emerging technologies, such as VR and AR, are also a vital part that many digital marketing luxury brands apply. Big travel companies are aware that an expensive website can bring a much better return on investment than websites built with drag-n-drop platforms. Luxury travel website designs provide additional opportunities for enhancing functionality and user experience through custom code.
What makes a good travel website?
The first thing you need to make clear before creating a luxury travel web design is what type of travel website you want:
- Personal tour journey maker website
- Hotel booking website
- Transportation services website
- Tour operator website
While all these types of travel websites need to be built in slightly different ways, all high-quality travel website designs have a few things in common:
Custom code
Even though it is cheaper and takes less time to launch a templated tourism website, it will bring many troubles down the road. Writing custom code is crucial for building a premium travel website design. Here are just a few reasons why you should opt for a custom-coded WordPress design:
- Flexibility: It allows you to create a travel website tailored to the needs of your business. You can implement all the elements of your brand identity system and additional features that page-building platforms can’t support.
- Scalability: A custom web development approach allows you to build a strong website infrastructure that will be able to handle the increase in traffic as your travel business grows.
- Better Page Speed: Almost nothing can ruin the user experience like slow loading times on your travel website can. A clean code is essential for improving your website speed and keeping visitors on your pages.
- Easy updates: Custom-coded travel agency websites have a much longer lifespan since they are much easier to update compared to templated ones.
Intuitive navigation
A well-designed travel website should be easy to use so that visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for. The best practice is to make navigation simple and organized, with clear labels and easy-to-follow steps. You should avoid overcrowding your menus and ensure that font sizes are large enough so that everyone can quickly understand to which destination every navigation element is leading.
The travel website design should also be responsive so that it looks and functions well on all devices. Visitors should be able to find the information they need without having to search through multiple pages or click on confusing links.
SEO-friendly travel website design
To boost the performance of your travel website in search engines, our SEO company advises you to:
- Build a mobile-friendly travel web design
- Create a clean site structure
- Remove distractive elements in a layout
- Optimize images and include alt text
- Target valuable keywords for the travel industry
- Optimize meta descriptions
- Improve page speed
However, keep in mind that search engine optimization is a long-term commitment, and you might not see any results in the first 6-12 months. Hiring SEO professionals is the safest option since it is hard to keep track of all the factors that Google considers when ranking websites on the SERP on your own. They will help you fix mistakes in your travel website design early on and minimize the time it takes before you start to feel the benefits of SEO for your business.
Travel Blog
Blogging on travel websites can help you to connect with potential customers and build trust by providing them with helpful traveling tips and sharing exciting stories. Also, giving interesting facts about destinations and their attractions on your travel blog can lead to more bookings. Additionally, writing blog articles will allow you to rank on Google for more keywords, which is crucial for obtaining more organic traffic. Finally, by writing high-quality articles, you can create a valuable resource for other tourism websites and earn more backlinks.
Customer support
Customer support is vital on travel websites because it helps customers with any questions they may have when booking a destination. It can also help resolve any issues that may arise during the trip, such as lost luggage or incorrect flight information. Additionally, customer support can answer questions about the destination, the city, and the attractions, which can be helpful to people who are planning their routes. Customer support is an integral feature that digital marketing luxury brands use, and here are a few simple ways you can enhance it on your travel agency website:
- Live chat
- FAQ section
- Phone number (but provide the option for clients to call you through an app to avoid potential roaming charges)
And as it is important to ensure transparency and avoid potential complaints, we recommend implementing the following features in your travel website design as well:
- Terms & Conditions
- Privacy policy
- User Agreement
How to Create Your Own Travel Website
In the era of DIY page-building platforms, it has never been easier for business owners with zero coding knowledge to launch a website. Such platforms offer different website templates you can use for creating a travel website design on your own. By checking other travel website examples, you can come up with ideas for your own tourism website. But keep in mind that templated websites still can’t match the quality of a well-designed, custom-coded website.
Hiring professionals is always the safest choice if you are looking to build a high-converting travel website. To ensure the high quality of their products, travel web design agencies engage in a comprehensive website creation process. They will help you get a tourism website that booth looks attractive and functions smoothly. When choosing between agencies, checking website design examples in their portfolios can help you make the best possible decision.
Tips and tricks for inspiring travel website design
As the travel industry is unique, you need to pay attention to details when building a travel agency website design. Investing additional resources in implementing features that will boost the user experience for your visitors usually pays off in the long run. You should aim to make your travel website design stand out in front of the competition. With that in mind, let’s check tips and tricks that can help you build inspiring travel website design:
Design inspiring hero section
A hero section is a featured area on a website that is designed to draw attention to specific content on the website. This area is typically highlighted with different colors, fonts, and designs, making it easier for visitors to notice it. When users arrive on your website, they are more likely to stay on the page if they see something that interests them. A well-designed hero section on your travel agency website can help intrigue your potential customers and make them keep exploring your content. Some of our website hero section ideas for travel websites include:
- Background video showing beautiful destinations
- Image Slideshow with destinations you are offering
- Quick search filter for destinations and offers
- Add texture to the hero image to simulate the 3D effect
- Write an attention-grabbing headline
The goal is to make your hero section relatable to the target audience and evoke positive emotions. Well-designed hero section can help you create a great first impression about your travel website.
Experiment with emerging technology
Implementing features based on new technology, such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, is a great way to give your travel agency website design a breath of fresh air. Since such features can significantly improve the user experience and keep visitors engaged, they became an integral part that many digital marketing luxury brands include. You can use VR and AR technology to provide your customers with the following:
- Virtual hotel tours
- Breathtaking landscapes
- City tours
The only downside is that this technology is still expensive. However, depending on your target audience and your budget, enhancing your travel website design with VR and AR technology might help you appear more professional and get more bookings.
Make the checkout process easy
When aiming to maximize the conversion rates on your travel agency website, it is vital to create a user-friendly checkout process. You need to ensure the whole payment process goes as smoothly as possible and remove any obstacles that might make your customers search for another travel agency. If your checkout process is complicated, it might be time to redesign your website with the following in mind:
Creating a mobile-friendly checkout page
It should be one of your top priorities, as the number of people who use mobile devices for booking their trips is increasing.
Asking only for the necessary information during the checkout process
This is another way to reduce friction and the number of steps it takes for your customers to book a trip. If possible, try to collect visitors’ emails before they arrive on the checkout page of your travel website.
Allowing users to log in with their social media accounts
This is a great way to make the checkout process faster while still being able to collect personal data that will help you retarget the customer through various forms of digital marketing.
Offering multiple payment options
Offering multiple payment options on your tourism website will allow customers to choose the payment method that is most convenient for them. That can help increase conversion rates, as you will avoid scenarios where customers withdraw from the booking process because their preferred payment method is not supported on your travel agency website.
Showing security seals and badges
It will help you build trust with your customers and let them know that their payment information is safe.
Including progress indicators
Progress indicators on your checkout page will help your customers keep track of the payment process and understand how many steps are left before they can start packing for the trip. This simple feature can enormously boost the user experience on your travel agency website.
One of our favorite travel website design examples is Booking.com which has an intuitive checkout process.
Provide Travel Planning tools
Including features like a calendar, maps, trip planner, etc., is a simple way to help your clients organize their routes and make them return to your website. It is also a good idea to provide information on activities and events in the area, such as concerts and festivals, so your clients can plan their trip upfront.
Interactive maps are essential for travel websites because they help visitors find destinations and attractions more quickly than old-fashioned paper maps. You must ensure that the locations of hotels, restaurants, rent-a-car agencies and other services your clients might look for are accurate. Keeping your travel agency website’s visitors engaged and spicing up their adventure by including reviews and interesting descriptions of tourist attractions is also a good idea.
Use high-quality destination photos
Destination photos are one of the most important elements in a travel website design. They help potential customers visualize what they’re looking at before they even book a trip. Photos also show the destination in its best light, encouraging people to book a trip sooner rather than later. However, you need to ensure that your photos are of high quality. And since a large number of photos on a website can cause slow loading times, our WordPress web design agency recommends optimizing image file sizes on time.
Give Social Proof
A vital feature that digital marketing luxury brands pay attention to is building trust with potential customers. Before booking a trip with your travel agency, people usually want to know what your previous customers think of your business. They will look for social proof. And there are not many better ways to provide social proof to your potential customers than implementing reviews and testimonials in your travel agency website design:
- Reviews can help you increase conversion rates on your website by providing valuable information to your tourism website’s visitors. You can design them in a way that allows people to rate each destination and share their opinion after the trip is over. Research suggests that 93% of travel decisions are based on reviews. Having a lot of positive reviews is a proven way to grow your business. However, keep in mind that even negative feedback is valuable since it allows you to fix the problems your customers are facing.
- Testimonials are another powerful way to give social proof to potential customers. Showing smiling faces and statements of people who have used your travel agency’s services will help you build trust with the target audience and increase conversion rates. And perhaps an even more effective type of testimonial for travel website design are video testimonials. By asking your customers to share a piece of their adventure, you can evoke even more positive emotions within your audience.
Get in touch
Travel website designs are best done by professionals with advanced coding knowledge and years of experience in the industry. To make your travel agency website stand out from the competition, experts from our digital marketing agency can help you with the following:
- Web design
- Content writing
- Web development
- PPC advertising
- SEO
- and more
Schedule a call with Alpha Efficiency today, and we will start working on your luxury travel website design after carefully analyzing your business goals. Just like you are helping people explore the beauties of Planet Earth, we’d love to be your guides on the exciting digital journey.
