Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Top Tips For a Higher Converting Tourism Website [Video Series]

February 2023

Brian Nicholson

Your website’s ability to convert is a crucial element of any direct bookings strategy. In the final video of our 7-part Direct Bookings Video Series, we’ll provide a checklist—and show examples—of many of our top tips that we’ve seen make a real difference in conversion rates for tour, activity, and attraction websites.

We’ve included the checklist below, with some supporting notes; but this is intended only as a supplement to the video.

Tactics For Improving Your Tourism Website’s Conversion Rate

Invest in compelling images and videos. See Great Photography Creates More Bookings.

Use a photographer and videographer with experience shooting your type of tour or activity. Avoid the temptation to hire your cousin’s nephew who shot your sister’s wedding.
Consider including some audio from guides (story or joke) and guests (screaming on the zipline or laughing with friends on a raft)

Create policies that give people confidence rather than make them think twice

Create the best cancellation policy that your finances and operations allow. Compare to the competition, including Tripadvisor.
Use a well-placed book with confidence messaging
Use positive policy wording

Build trust

Show some information about how many customers you’ve served or how long you’ve been in business
Leverage the voice of customers in a multi-layered way
- Aggregated star ratings
- Reviews
- Top quote

Get calls to action right

Make them easy to find
- Sticky booking bar
- Don’t count on non-traditional next steps; make sure a button is clear so people don’t have to hunt.
Use the right wording. “Reserve” or “check availability” might work better than “book now”

Use a tiered writing format for progressive scannability

Card layouts with images
Tiered headlines
Headings and bold text
Collapsible sections for longer content

Write for your users

Address your reader (“you” and “your” language) rather than talking about yourself (“we” and “our” language)
Address questions and objections
- Not only through FAQs. Think about your core customer. What questions or objections might they normally have?
- When writing FAQs, make them contextual, and think through how to consolidate them. Avoid long, non-searchable FAQ lists.
- If a question is asked frequently, consider addressing the topic more prominently.
Think about who they are, where they are, and what they’re hoping for. Get ideas from reviews of happy customers, and echo back the benefits, emotions, etc. in your copy.
Personalize when possible. Example: use geo-targeted versions of your pages where it makes sense
- Geo location example https://highlandsaerialpark.com/atlanta/

Make pricing clear

Don’t make customers hunt for pricing.

Select a booking engine with good usability

Intuitive date and ticket selections
Modern payment methods
Reasonable number of fields

Easily accessed discount codes

Have your developers implement click-to-copy for any coupon codes you display on the site.

Work on site speed

Prevent dead ends, but don’t overwhelm with choices.

Provide adequate cross-linking and cross-promotion (such as related tours that might be a good fit for the visitor), but not so much that you detract significantly from the primary call to action. The tricky balance is: have I done everything I can to stay out of the way of a conversion, AND is there an escape hatch for someone who decides to not book this tour, but might still be convinced to book something with us?
Watch for actual dead ends (dead clicks) with Microsoft Clarity (free).

Design for the realities of mobile browsing

Consider horizontal “swipers” (carousels) so that people can scroll vertically past sections they’re not interested in.
Try multi-column layouts when the content allows.

Primary Principle: Empathize.

When you empathize with your users, you’ll automatically make decisions and take actions that will serve them well, such as:

Write copy that is focused on the customer, rather than you
- Policy wording will be friendly and positive and will be useful to customers, rather than designed to protect the company.
- You’ll be speaking about them rather than about yourself.
Address their desires and concerns early and clearly.
- What about bad weather?
- Is this too intense for my kids?
- What if I need to cancel?
Test the website yourself to make sure it works smoothly
See how people are using the site, to find out what’s working for them and what’s not.