As changes and trends continue to put pressure on vacation rental managers, one constant remains: a positive user experience drives bookings and revenue. The key to providing a positive experience is owning a strategically designed, stable, and profitable website.
Research shows that 48% of users consider a website’s design when judging a brand’s credibility.
For vacation rental managers, websites represent the best opportunity to make an impression and provide a positive experience. In today’s crowded marketplace, one-half of US adults are spending their time online interacting with brands and products. As interactions increase, so do opportunities to engage users and turn them into converting guests.
Efficiently position your brand and product for a winning experience
An important aspect of providing a positive user experience for vacation rental guest is ensuring users can view and book your inventory online. Over the last few years, trends have generated the development of two types of vacation rental websites, sub-domains and API integrated. As industry experts, RealTech recommends vacation rentals utilize websites with an API integration.
Increase conversion rates and revenue with an API
By deploying an API integration with your website, you can drive users to book in as little as three clicks. By doing so, your vacation rental website provides an extremely efficient experience for users.
Benefits of an integrated website:
- Provides a clear path to search function from the homepage
- Search from the homepage without any search criteria
- Property data is streamlined in one website
- Continuous branding
- Responsive templates
- Clear prompt to accept terms and conditions
- Robust sharing and comparing units functionality
- Can modify reservation from the checkout
Challenges from subdomain websites:
- Inconsistent branding and outdated style
- Clunky user interface and difficult navigation
- Not mobile friendly
- Search landing pages don’t show property pictures
- Booking process is very difficult and non-intuitive
Experience the difference with RealTech’s API integration
Better Website Rankings
With a fully integrated API website, search ranking positions nearly always show substantial growth. Because an integrated website has more content for search engines to find, your site will rank higher. Better rankings leads to potential guests finding your website above local competition.
Complete Control
An API Integrated website gives you more control over all portions of your website, from homepage to search results to the online booking interface. Want to show custom virtual tours with your listings? No problem with an API website. Show virtual tours alongside static images and videos for each property.
Mobile-Responsive
People are using their mobile devices to search vacation-related information more than ever before. In fact, Google now considers mobile-responsiveness as a core ranking factor. Most sub-domain websites aren’t mobile responsive, which means fewer potential guests will find your business on their mobile devices if your website is not fully integrated.
If you’re not sure which platform you have, let Realtech give you a no-obligation website review and make sure you’re not missing out on direct bookings because of outdated website design.
