Semantic, a company that designs and optimises websites for visitor attractions worldwide, is sharing a helpful checklist for attraction marketers to work through on a weekly basis in order to level up their websites and deliver better guest experiences.
Guests are expecting better online experiences. Often, the website is the guest’s first impression of a brand, yet marketers are busy and overstretched. So, they need simple systems and a checklist to ensure the essential tasks are covered. If the website is slow, complicated or confusing, guests will drop away, which costs the attraction in lost ticket sales.
Weekly website wins
Semantic recommends that the first step is to schedule a weekly website review meeting:
“In this meeting, Google yourself, and use your phone to do so as that’s where 85%+ of your guests are – one in five UK adults only use their phone to browse the web,” explains Neil Lewin, MD of Semantic. “Are the results good, relevant, and up-to-date?”
The next step is to click through. Semantic says marketers should put themselves in the guest’s shoes: “Is the content good, relevant and high quality? Are your USPs clear? Are there any incentives for booking online? What about any guarantees or incentives to book even in bad weather, for example, multi-visit passes or return-visit weather guarantees?
The team should also try different tasks, like working out the open times and ticket prices and trying to book via phone. At least every month, and when launching big campaigns, put through a live payment.
The above steps are a basic health check to help keep a visitor attraction website fresh, up-to-date and relevant. However, the feedback can be very subjective. That’s where the LIFT Model, created by Chris Goward, comes in.
The LIFT Model
The LIFT Model is relevant for attractions as it brings structure and a consistent framework to web page or website journey feedback. Marketers can use it to assess key pages in isolation or go through a whole user journey as though they were a particular guest type.
“You can think of the model as a rocket or plane; the higher it flies, the better your conversions and, ultimately, online results and revenue,” says Lewin.
There are six areas: value proposition, clarity, relevance, distractions, anxiety, and urgency. Teams should use these headings to structure their feedback when critiquing a webpage or customer journey in the weekly review meeting.
The value proposition is about how the attraction and its unique offering are communicated online. Is it high quality and compelling? How does it compare to competitors? Is it showcased effectively within the first few seconds of someone landing on the page?
Then, when it comes to clarity, making the value proposition clear and easy to understand is vital. Guests are busy, distracted, and have many other things to consider. The website needs to grab them with a simple hook or message to generate intrigue and help direct them to explore further. Are there easy links for crucial information? Is it easy to understand what the attraction offers from the initial landing page and determine the value for money?
The third heading is relevance; teams must make the messaging, imagery, and copy more relevant to a given audience. This may be just on the homepage or key website pages, like the ticket prices page, or as part of more extensive pay-per-click campaigns. Ensuring the messaging resonates and is relatable for the target customers is critical to avoid them getting distracted or leaving the site.
Anxiety and distractions are the opposites of the two areas that boost conversions. Marketing teams should check for confusing content, disclaimers, complex pricing or anything else that can cause the guest to worry or become overwhelmed with options. “This is why you need to be careful with upsells,” adds Lewin. “Get the customer to decide on a primary product before bombarding them with too many upsells.” Other distractions include social media widgets, popups, survey widgets or overbearing cookie warnings.
The final point is urgency. “If you can time or capacity limit key products, then you can use psychological triggers to boost sales and tip customers over the line to buy.” This can include countdown timers, time-limited offers, variable pricing, limited stock messages, or messages showing how many other customers have bought a particular product or package. Typically, this works better for higher-value products or short breaks.
Website wins for summer
Semantic has more advice on easy website wins here, including how to stand out and showcase value proposition, using SEO to help build traffic and visitor numbers, making it easy to book with high-converting landing pages, effective pricing optimisation strategies, and unlocking extra revenue with upsells.
The team is also available for advice and has worked across all areas of the sector with numerous systems and providers, so it can give a broad perspective. In addition, the firm offers the free LOOP Website Optimisation Canvas, which can be used in weekly website health check meetings to engage the wider team.
“Over the past few years, we’ve noticed that marketers have had to stretch and take on more and more jobs in order to drive awareness for their attraction,” says Lewin. “No matter what new social media networks or influencers there are, their website is usually the hub.”
“That’s why we wanted to help the industry and provide an actionable, simple framework and tools to help systemise website feedback and get their team involved too. We find the most successful clients have tight feedback loops that involve the whole team and drive ongoing updates and improvements.”
Earlier this year, Semantic shared more information about the interactive map feature included with LOOP, its innovative platform that enables attractions to get online quickly or to improve their existing online performance easily.
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