Building a new travel website?

Are you thinking of redeveloping your travel website or building a new one? There is a lot to consider, including which theme to use, how to structure your content, which features to build, SEO, and Security, just among a few. Below, we will look at a few of these that make an important part of the initial stage of building a travel website.

• Choosing the right theme/design: Most travel agents would choose a ready theme/template and create their website, which is practical and economical as creating your design from scratch is quite expensive, and there are so many beautifully designed, fully responsive travel templates out there, it just makes sense to use a ready one. However, choosing the right theme requires answering a few questions about the underlying business itself.

# Are you building a corporate website?

# Will it be an online booking portal, or will it have such capabilities in the future?

# Are you an outbound travel agent or inbound?

# Do you sell a particular destination or set of destinations? or an entire region?

# What travel services do you provide? Land arrangement? Vehicle rentals? Travel insurance?

If you answer these questions, it will automatically make your list of suitable themes shorter, and you will have the most suitable theme for your website.

• Minimum content to go live: We know building content is painful and requires travel agents to put in a lot of hard work. So, when developing a website, ask yourself and decide which content you would like to put to launch the site. Some might focus only on the current offers or upcoming tours, or some may prefer to just put the tour highlights and fill in the details later. The answer to this question should come from your business goals and short-term and long-term digital marketing plan. Your website is your main digital marketing tool, and whatever you do with it should be aligned with your overall marketing plan and business goals.

• Get basic facts right: When launching a site, make sure that your site has the basic information correctly defined, as we have come across many companies that put dummy email addresses or phone numbers to begin with, and later just forget to update that information. This is very dangerous for your business as many potential clients would bounce off to incorrect coordinates.

• Web Security: Securing the website should be the priority when building a website. Installing an SSL certificate on the website will make your website visitors feel safe. Especially If you have an online payment facility, then having an SSL certificate installed by a trusted authority is a must, as it shows the secure mark in the browser address bar, which makes your customers feel safe. Another security aspect is to implement CAPTCHA, which is required on input forms to confirm the data is being submitted by actual humans. There are a few other aspects that you can implement on your website. However, these are not in the scope of this article.

Have multiple websites? It is common for travel companies to build more than one website. They have a corporate or general website, then they might build a booking portal website, and some may also start another concept and create a new brand and launch a new site for that brand. Although having multiple websites is not recommended for various reasons, if you must have multiple sites, then the cross-linking among websites, branding, and ownership should be carefully planned. After all, you do not want to confuse your audience with multiple websites and brands. If you must have different websites, then the audience should understand that through design/branding and smooth navigation.

TourSoft International

Website - https://toursoft.systems