Website

Workshop Notes Rebecca King 2015

Website Strategy Website strategic focus #1: Usability To create a website that is best practice, focus on usability so that consumers can comfortably use the website and stay longer. Below lists out the ideal usability and SEO components of a website strategy, which should be fulfilled with future iterations of the site: ● The ideal load time should be 3 seconds or less, before the consumer loses interest and navigates away. ● Navigation menu depth, consumers like to click on one menu item and go straight to a page for the information. A hierarchy of menu selection is too hard for the consumer make choices on when they can’t see the content associated with the menu item. ● Ensure the menu visible across all pages. ● No usage of Flash, Silverlight or other animation platforms. This means that Google can see your content, plus it can be read on Apple devices (such as iPhone and iPad). ● Contact information, include all typical contact information, opening times etc. but also include GPS locations, a Google map embedded and links to social media accounts. ● Prominent call to action. Throughout the website text there should be many opportunities for consumers to complete the action you want them to take, such as make a booking. ● The top right hand side corner is known as the ‘action corner’. This means that any call-to-action should be placed in that area. Contact information, social media buttons, newsletter sign ups and the most important a ‘Book Now’ or ‘Buy now’ style button.

● Navigation labels in the menus must be clear and intuitive, with minimal choices, and no double menu along the side and along the top, this can confuse consumers. ● Within the various pages it is useful to have internal links back to the appropriate page, for example: Link to the Attractions page using the phrase Attractions in (Destination), this helps with SEO too. ● Ensure the company logo sits on the upper left hand side of the header, on all pages, and it links back to the home page when pressed. ● Ensure the copy is written in a professional but relaxed fashion, which will appeal to the target audience. ● Only 10% of people read text on a website, so ensure the text is broken up with dot points to help the consumers taken in the information. ● Branding should be consistent with offline branding and fonts and colours should be consistent throughout. ● Scrolling images are highly desirable across the top of your site, however if they are used it is useful to add user controls to stop, pause and select images of interest. ● Easy to use search functionality on the site where consumers can search using all data fields. ● Progressive enhancement, the site needs to be built with different browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome) and older versions of those browsers in mind. ● Readability; fonts should remain uniform and be easily read across different browsers. ● Photo and video galleries are not user friendly, they make consumers navigate away from the text in order to see the pictures. Pictures and videos should be alongside supporting the text on a particular subject.

● Images of staff should be on the Contact Us page, so consumers can see what the helpful people at the Visitor Centre are ‘really like’, to show a human side that they can connect with. ● Friendly URLs, the domain name is very important but the subsequent page names should also be concise. ● Critical information, particularly contact details, special offers and calls to action, should be above the fold (anything that you need to scroll down for). For the pages that go lower than the fold, ensure that all of the critical information is up the top and the less important information is down lower. ● It is important not to use your own industry jargon on consumer facing sites. ● Don't include any external 3rd party advertising opportunities that may inadvertently advertise other destinations offers.

Website strategic focus #2: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) The goal is to have the website ranking the highest for all keyword searches related to your business. Strategically, SEO is the ability to get a website seen by a search engine it is very important, with 80% of searchers clicking on organic searches, however it is often overlooked by some web developers. With the development of a new website the following components can be incorporated with minimal extra cost. Retrofitting on an old website may incur more significant costs. ● Ensure both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are installed on the website in order to gain many insights including the exact key phrases people are using to find your website. ● Add alt tags to each image on the site, use as many keywords as possible to not only explain what the picture is, but also use keyword phrases. When looking at

an existing site use a tool such as feedthebot.com tool to see what images have alt text. ● Use the new Google Planner at www.googlekeywordtool.com to ascertain which keyword should be used within your: Text, headings, picture names, alt text and links. Don't presume to know what people are typing in to find the website. ● Regular updates are crucial to maintain ‘relevance’ to Googlebots that crawl the site regularly to see if there is new information. If there isn't then the site will start to lose ranking compared to competitors that are updating regularly. At the very least, monthly, will help to increase SEO rankings. A blog that is a part of the website will help significantly with this. ● Use of a Content Management System (CMS) is strongly recommended in order to keep content up to date in-house. A world-renowned CMS such as Wordpress or Joomla or even Squarespace is preferred to less-known proprietary developed software. Therefore if there is a falling-out with the web developer there is the ability to take the website to another web developer to use. ● Headlines must be rich in keywords and not just written for the consumer, it is a fine balance. Adding keywords into content and headings, and making the headings descriptive of the page content, will improve pages. For example the word ‘welcome’ as a headline is not useful for SEO. This includes H1, H2, H3 etc. ● Review the title tag of the home page. 80 characters are more acceptable for SEO purposes and require enticing phrases in the title tags. These are what are shown in the search engines for people to click on and if they are not interesting people won’t click through. ● Create individual meta description tags for each page as well as keyword tags. Some search engines to help determine what the site is about use this information. The meta description is what is shown in the search engines and need to entice people to click on your listing.

● Use keywords in URLs where possible. Matching these to the page title & navigation link will also help to improve search engine rankings, as well as readability. ● Inbound, outbound and internal links all help SEO rankings. Increasing the balance of inbound to the level of outbound links will also benefit SEO rankings and internal links within the site will also help SEO. ● Listings in external database sites such as ATDW (for Tourism), Google Places for Business, True Local, Yelp etcetera enhance search rankings. ● Long tail searches should be identified to fulfill niche searches. ● Invisible text or keyword clusters (‘cloaking’). This is often known as ‘Black Hat SEO’ and is the practice of overloading the pages with too many keywords, it is often known as ‘text stuffing’ and when search engines detect this they will lower the rankings of the site. ● Home Page Content. Google likes to see very relevant content on the home page. Consider including keyword relevant text in this page in order to help search engines find this site. ● Ensure the site is clear on your value proposition keywords and is replicated throughout all content on the site. ● Include social media share buttons at top RHS of every page and also after each article of interest. ● Map embedded on site linking to Google Places listing.

Website strategic focus #3: Mobility More people now use their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets than desktops to search the Internet. Without question all online content needs to now be mobile friendly.

More increasingly, consumers expect their mobile devices will help them interact and interpret their surroundings, particularly customers who are already ‘in-destination’. ● Responsive sites have barely been around for 18 months but now are the standard of web design. A ‘responsive site’ simply means that the site will show a hierarchy of information depending on the screen size - from a large desktop screen to a small smartphone screen. A great example of this is http://traveloregon.com the current (Destination) site is very hard to use on a smartphone as the text and links are too small. ● Responsive sites have one unified URL for a given piece of content for all devices. Often mobile-optimised websites redirect to an m-dot site. For example if the customer visited www.website.com.au on an iPhone, they could be automatically be redirected to m.website.com.au that was the first generation of technology for mobile websites. But m-dot websites come at a cost. For example redirects can affect Search Engine Optimisation. With slower internet connections it may take up to 2-5 seconds for the redirect to an m-dot to complete. This reduces the likelihood of them persisting or returning. Redirect is not necessarily inclusive of new technologies tablets, internet, TVs. Redirects and hardware-specific URLs and websites are problematic for social sharing. If a visitor shares a link to the mobile m-dot website but their friends aren't on mobile devices, what happens? Desktop users will get the site designed for a 3.5-inch screen on their 24-inch monitors. The same is true of sharing links via email. ● Responsive websites must have simple consumers expectations fulfilled such as phone numbers that are dial-able and buttons and text entry fields that are touch-friendly. ● GPS and Tracking so that visitors know exactly where they are at any given time and can share their location with family and friends. ● Mobile responsive sites can also be updated using a Content Management System (CMS) where the content that is placed on the main responsive site is also seen on devices immediately.

● Particularly for destination marketing, a web developer needs to place most importance on the mobile site functionality, this is known as a ‘mobile first’ focus. ● Responsive sites are accessible with any mobile browser provided there is network coverage and low-res pictures to ensure fast loading times. ● It is important to keep the layout simple & easy to use on a small screen, tabs or icons can be useful important customer needs. ● Responsive image solution - make sure that the images are getting loaded to each device are screen specific sizes. Website strategic focus #4: Bookings or sales. ● Components of good interface: ● Formatting easy to read, concise, same font, well spaced, not too text heavy, great photos and videos of product ready to sell. ● Availability of product. ● Key components of the form are above the fold. ● Comparison of products. ● Ideally with dynamic packaging. ● Payment platform with safe payment gateway.

● If you sell accommodation or tours use a channel manager or online booking system to ensure that your inventory is available not only on your website but other distributor sites too. If you are having troubles deciding on the right booking system then look up the ATDW e-Kit online and see the relevant booking systems.

● If you are in events use a system such as Eventbrite to automate your booking process. ● If you sell online products make sure you have an online shop, many CMS’s have their own ecommerce functionality but you may like to look at Shopify, Vend for POS and/or Paypal for online payments.

For further information please contact Rebecca King on [email protected]