Why Great Web Design Is Crucial For Tourism Businesses in Hawaii
Whether you specialize in one of the islands or you offer Hawaii experiences that span the archipelago, web design makes a big difference in how potential clients find, perceive and interact with your tourism business. More specifically, websites are part of your advertising and marketing. They need to look great — and they need to meet your unique objectives.
Navigating Hawaii’s Unique Web Design Challenges
There are a few challenges you’ll face when building a website for this type of business. First, going to Hawaii is a big trip (and a major expense) for most mainland clients. Second, many people from the mainland don’t realize the sheer diversity of options that we have here on the islands. Third, the tourism industry here is nothing if not competitive — you need to stand out.
Use Web Design To Grow Your Unique Business
Websites are versatile tools that you can use to navigate any type of marketing or advertising challenge that you come across as a tour guide, equipment rental business, scuba trainer, booking agency, hotel or any other type of tourism-industry operator. The key is building something that works from the ground up to meet your specific goals.
Establish Trust With Quality Design
People traveling to Hawaii are often spending a hefty sum, so they tend to have high expectations about the vacation. That means that members of your target market are going to expect big things from you, too. There are several ways your website helps you meet and exceed these expectations right from the beginning.
Make It Look Good
The colors, fonts, graphics and visual content you choose all make a major difference in communicating the value of your brand. You might be surprised to learn that that’s really just the beginning.
Web design is both an art and a science. In addition to crafting a look that aligns with your brand, good design is about understanding how that aesthetic might appear on various types of devices and browsers. It’s crucial for your website to automatically look good on tablets, mobile phones and desktop computers if you want to connect with potential clients.
Make It Engaging
As a tourism industry business, an engaging website is about more than just grabbing attention. It’s about communicating the fact that you know what makes life interesting.
In other words, an engaging website shows that you understand you’re selling a fun (or a relaxing, adventurous or sophisticated) Hawaii experience. Visiting your website is among the first steps that a potential traveler would take, so it makes sense to set the stage with photos, videos and other relatable, engaging content.
Make It Load Quickly
Alongside the need for engaging, visual content, it’s also important to understand that visitors to your site are usually in a hurry. After all, they’re not on vacation yet. They might be out at lunch, on a train or in any of a number of slow-internet situations
To that end, good web design means that everything on your site is optimized for quick load times. Your entire site should load quickly, even if someone happens to be on a not-so-great mobile connection.
Help Visitors Find the Information They Need
Hawaii is one of the richest, most varied tourist spots in the world. Each island has its own character, and there’s a wide variety of things to do in all of the major destinations. You can stand out by organizing your site correctly, establishing authority and offering confused travelers a much-needed hotline to your company.
Show Them What They Need To Know
The way you organize the information on the website is critical. The most important messages need prime real estate on home pages and advertising landing pages, but after that things tend to get more complicated.
Your organization strategy often depends on unique aspects of your business. If you specialize in a single type of experience, such as a marine wildlife tour, then your web design might be relatively simple in terms of organization. However, if you offer destination tours across the archipelago, you might need a more involved system of menus, on-page navigation and cross-linking.
Showcase Your Expertise
Good website design can even bring people to your website in the first place. One way of doing this is by establishing expertise in a specific subject. In this case, that subject would be the types of experiences or services that your business offers.
This is where a cohesive, forward-looking strategy makes a huge difference. Rather than cast your net wide and try to cover every conceivable subject of interest in a few pages, you can plan out your strategy to establish expertise on and draw traffic about your most profitable areas of business first. This results-first approach helps your customers and grows your business; it’s a win-win.
Show the Next Steps
No matter how hard you try, you can’t answer everybody’s questions on the website. Consistently offering options to contact your business lets people follow up with any lingering questions they might have — and provides opportunities for you to close deals.
Stand Out in an Increasingly Crowded Market
The final piece of the web design puzzle is what you don’t see. Successful websites are built on an invisible, technical foundation that’s effective in combination with search engines, social media sites and other advertising platforms.
For example, standing out on a search engine results page means predicting and incorporating the exact types of keywords and key phrases that you expect your potential clients to use. Everything from web page titles to image descriptions could have an impact on your search engine rank. There are even some technical settings that could make or break your ability to get your message in front of the right people.
There are other factors, too, such as linking and content strategies. It all adds up to an ongoing project that benefits from a professional level of experience and skill.
Web Design from Hawaii, for Hawaii
Good web design means understanding the World Wide Web, but it also means infusing local character into a site. If you want to really communicate what it’s like to take part in a contemporary Hawaiian experience, use a Hawaiian designer. Contact us at our Kauai web design firm today.
