A Complete Guide to

Building and
Launching Your
New Hotel
Website
Build a beautiful and
highly converting
website using
tips from our
team of experts.
Contents
Why Should Your Hotel Have a Website? ................ pg. 3
Checklist for Building Your New Hotel Website .... pg. 4
Choosing a Template ....................................................... pg. 6
No-Code Tools .................................................................... pg. 9
Your Homepage ................................................................ pg. 10
Adding Your Brand Assets .............................................. pg. 11
Mobile-Friendly Design .................................................. pg. 13
Your Page Content ........................................................... pg. 19
Adding Your Call to Action ............................................ pg. 21
Search Engine Optimisation ......................................... pg. 23
Accessibility ........................................................................ pg. 28
Ease of Use ......................................................................... pg. 29
FAQs and Your USPs ........................................................ pg. 30
Setting the Final Details ................................................... pg. 31
Previewing .......................................................................... pg. 32
Publishing ............................................................................ pg. 33
Post-Publishing Details ................................................... pg. 34
Additional Resources ...................................................... pg. 36

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Why Should Your Hotel
Have a Website?
Gone are the days when hotels could attract and retain
guests through just word of mouth and traditional
marketing. In recent years, 88% of people have preferred
booking hotels online. Now, not having a website is a sure
way to lose credibility. It makes your hotel look
untrustworthy, dated and out-of-touch.

Leaving your brand at the mercy of online travel agents

(OTAs) adds costs and dampens your storytelling. You risk
bad reviews, incorrect information, and no easy way to
make direct contact with your guests.

As you take back control of the narrative, a website acts as a

digital brochure for all your marketing messages. It helps
you provide better customer service and strengthens the
relationship with your guests. And the best part is that once
you invest in it—if you choose the right provider—you have
it forever, and it continues to work for you at extremely low
costs.

Websites are now accessible, affordable and as easy to

create as using a drag-and-drop tool. They can quickly help
you go from being a locally-known hotel with occasional
bookings to a fully-booked hotel with international visitors
throughout the year.

Without further ado, this guide will cover the A to Z of

building your own accessible, highly converting and
mobile-friendly website.

3
A Checklist for Building
Your New Hotel Website
1. Preview and choose a website template
Take into consideration your brand style, site responsiveness and UX.

2. Add your fonts and colours

Determine your font style guide, sizes for text and headings and colours
to use throughout your website.

3. Add images to your website

Import content into the website builder, then replace the images in the
template with your own images.

4. Upload logo and favicon

Your hotel's logo will show at the top of your site. The favicon is next to
the page title in the browser tab.

5. Update page content

Add information about rooms, offers and unique selling points (USPs).

6. Set up call-to-action (CTA) buttons

Add your booking engine, restaurant or spa URLs to the CTA buttons.

7. Add social links

Use social icons to add your profile URLs.

8. Add contact info and forms

Add contact information in the template; ensure submissions are sent to
a monitored email address.

9. Add alt-text for images

Write alt-text to describe the images if they don't load, and to help SEO
and site accessibility.

10. SEO optimisation

Edit overall SEO settings, including page titles and descriptions.

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 11. Add Google Analytics tracking ID
Create a Google Analytics account; add property ID to site settings to
start measuring performance.

12. Set up URL redirects

Traffic from old URLs can be redirected to the right place on your new
site with URL redirects.

13. Adjust the 404 error page

Customise your 404 error page in to reflect your hotel branding and
tone of voice.

14. Install SSL Certificate

All sites can have an SSL certificate generated for free using Hotelchamp
eCommerce.

15. Update legal aspects and privacy policy

Add a privacy policy page and cookie notifications under Settings in our
website builder.

16. Preview on different devices, test links and URLs

Preview how the website will appear on different devices and test all
the buttons and links.

17. Publish site

Publish your site, add your payment details and your site will go live.

18. Submit a sitemap to search engines

With Hotelchamp eCommerce, your sitemap is automatically submitted
for indexing.

19. Optimise your site’s performance

Check analytics on Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

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Choosing a Template
When building anything, you should always start with a
strategy and action plan. To build a website, start by
clarifying and planning what content to display as well as
your main goals and CTAs. Based on that, you'll need to
decide on either a single-page or a multi-page template.

On the next two pages, we've compared single and multi-

page websites to help you choose the best template for
your hotel.

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Single-Page Template
Single-page websites remove unnecessary noise and allow
users to focus on the most important content. Content is
displayed on one easy-to-navigate page with the purpose
of providing essential information and giving clear direction
on what actions to take. A single-page website creates a
funnel that converts website visitors quickly and efficiently.

Best for: small to medium-sized hotels

Advantages: Disadvantages:
Simple & quick to set up Lack of SEO: only one
Responsive and mobile- URL to display in search
friendly results. Ranking and
Removes distractions visibility are affected by
and confusion the limited content
Switching from a multi- Long loading time if the
page site can result in a content is not
37.5% increase in optimised, leading to a
conversion higher bounce rate

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 Multi-Page Template
A multi-page structure is a classic way to build a website,
consisting of many pages and subpages. Because it has
been around for so many years, most people are familiar
with navigating menus and search bars. However, your
website’s navigation has to be easily understandable for
higher conversions and longer website visits.

Best for: chains with multiple properties, hotels with a

range of amenities and content like blogs or guides

Advantages: Disadvantages:
Opportunity to scale Too much content can be
No limitations on distracting
text, images or Architecture needs to be
videos adapted for mobile-
More control over friendliness
your SEO strategy Bigger commitment in time
and resources

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No-Code Tools
Building a website from scratch can be overwhelming,
especially without a tech-savvy team. However, website
building has become more accessible and is no longer
limited to developers, thanks to no-code tools. Paired with
the millions of free online educational resources and
tutorials, no-code tools allow hoteliers to rapidly and
efficiently update their websites when they want to.
No-code
frameworks take
the fundamentals
of traditional code
and translate
them into a simple
drag and drop
solution with
reusable and
scalable elements.

The Benefits of No-Code Tools

1. Delivery is quicker, and productivity increases—projects
that took months now take only days.
2. The decreased need for specialised personnel means
reduced costs and resources.
3. Fewer dependencies increase autonomy and efficiency.
4. Less time is spent worrying about technicalities, so you
have more time to focus on your content.
5. It's easier to act on feedback from visitors, resulting in a
better online experience that boosts bookings.

Want a no-code tool for your hotel website? We can help.

Find out more

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Your Homepage
“On the average, five times as many people read the
headline as read the body copy. When you have written your
headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
This well-known quote came from the “father of advertising”,
David Ogilvy, in 1963 when talking about the importance of
headings. Today, the same can be said about homepages.

Almost The homepage gets

1 in every 2 2.8x more

website page views page views as the next
are for the homepage. most viewed page

For many visitors, the homepage is the landing page—and

their first impression of your brand. Most visitors do not even
make it past the homepage.

When creating a hotel website, the homepage should take

almost half of your visitor's attention. Mastering the
homepage is the best way to make an impact on them—
read on for tips that will turn your homepage into a magnet
for the eyes of your online visitors.

Is your homepage a trampoline?

A trampoline website has a high bounce rate and low time spent
viewing the page. For hotels, a trampoline homepage is damaging to
your direct booking strategy and can turn people away from your hotel.
Ensure you make visitors stay—accurately portray your hotel's benefits
and impress right off the bat. Take control of your narrative, have good
UX on your digital lobby and consider usability and page load time.
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Storytelling
The human brain is wired to process stories. When we listen
to a story, dopamine, cortisol and oxytocin are released.
Dopamine makes us more engaged and activates emotions.
Cortisol helps us form memories of the story, making it stick
in our minds long after it has been told. Lastly, oxytocin
helps us empathise with the characters in the story and is a
key ingredient in building trust. Stories help us process
information and add to our understanding of what we see.

The homepage is a crucial space to tell your story. The

content of your homepage needs to read as a story, take
your visitor on a journey and activate their imagination.

OT TI What Makes Good

H

Storytelling?
Talk about what makes you unique:
The history of your hotel, why it was created, the
building and its character, former guests, location and
character of your neighbourhood.

Make people imagine what their stay would look like:

Use imagery to help activate the guests' imagination
and daydream what their stay will look like.

Highlight your hotel's unique attributes and features:

What can a guest experience at your hotel that they
can't elsewhere?

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Dynamic Scrolling OT TI

P
Dynamic scrolling features all of your important
content on a single page. Without distracting
menus or navigation, you have more control over
how users view your website. It's also a perfect opportunity for
storytelling. You can take visitors through your content and
messaging in a more linear way—giving them the feeling of
holding a flyer or reading a pamphlet.

Navigation and Mindful Design

The homepage, and especially the hero section, play an
important part in orienting new visitors. For this reason, the
navigation bar and key links are helpful for visitors with a
primary goal that is not booking a room—like planning an
event, wedding, trip to the spa or looking for job vacancies.

Mindful web design avoids information or busy graphics

that can potentially overwhelm a website visitor. Trends are
moving to a cleaner design with lots of white space (also
known as negative space), making the visitor experience
more relaxing and your content more easily digestible. With
a simplified layout and space to breathe, users can focus on
the most important pieces of content and important CTAs,
allowing for a smoother and faster conversion to book.

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 Adding Your Brand Assets
Brand consistency is essential for your hotel to increase
recognition and customer loyalty. If you don't already have
one, you can benefit from creating brand guidelines as it:
Includes best practices and things to avoid
Ensures all communication is polished and professional
Defines your brand look and feel for design consistency
Empowers you to make quick and deliberate design
decisions

A strong brand guide will tie all your elements into a

cohesive brand story that communicates your mission.

What to Include in
Your Brand Guide
Logos Imagery
The most recognisable element of Specify the best colours, backgrounds
your brand identity. Specify all and ideal photography styles, as well
approved versions, placements, as how to use photos in combination
spacing/size requirements and do's with the other visual elements.
and don'ts.
Typography
Tone of Voice Select a brand font for titles, subtitles,
Crucial for consistency and shaping body text, quotes, and highlighted
how your audience sees you. Define text. Outline the font families, desired
your ideal tone of voice in a few size, spacing, and weight and their
words and include examples. relation to each other.
Colours Iconography
Outline primary and secondary It should be easy to understand and
colours—the fewer you have, the consistent with your brand’s other
easier it is to keep things consistent. design elements to create a unified
Specify the proper use of secondary look across all communications.
colours as accents.

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Can Colour Drive Conversions?
Colour has the power to influence mood and elicit quick
responses. While individual differences can contribute to
how someone perceives colours, studies show that some
colours have the same psychological effects on most
people.

To find the right colours for your hotel, consider researching

your target audience, industry and competitors and find
colours that best embody your brand personality.

The highest-converting colours for CTA's are strong and

bright colours—red, green, orange and yellow. To draw
more attention to your CTAs and forms, use white space
and contrasting colours. If one aspect of your design stands
out, it will likely be the first thing your viewers look at.
However, it's important to test placements and colour
combinations to see what your website visitors react to
more strongly and are more inclined to click on.

OT TI 60-30-10 design rule: 60% should be the main (background)

colour; 30% is the secondary colour, used in headers,
H

footers, text and accents; 10% is the accent colour, for CTAs,
time-sensitive content and notifications.

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Mobile-Friendly Design
Mobile eCommerce is quickly taking
the lead ahead of desktop purchasing.
Now is the time to prioritise your
mobile presence and ensure your
website is mobile-friendly.
60%
of overall web
Potential guests want to see your
traffic comes
property, availability, and rates quickly from mobile
and easily without opening another devices
device.
Mobile-friendly and responsive designs are more intuitive,
accessible, and typically more efficient, allowing for quicker
decisions and higher conversions. On top of that, Google
prioritises a mobile-friendly website over desktop for their
search engine algorithm. This is something to keep in mind
if you want to be one step ahead in the SEO game.

What is a
Mobile-First Website?
A mobile-first website is
designed to be viewed on
smartphones and tablets. It’s
adapted for smaller screens,
ensuring each element is
accessible and optimised on
every mobile device. It must
load quickly because it usually
loads via 4G or 5G networks
instead of fast, local WiFi. This
helps conversion rates, which
otherwise drop on average by
4.42% with each additional
second of load time.

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Mobile-Friendly Checklist
Responsive Templates
Responsive designs automatically adjust height, width, and
resolution to fit various screen sizes without changing the
content—saving time and energy when optimising your site.
All of the Hotelchamp eCommerce website templates are responsive.

Optimise Page Load Speed

47% of visitors abandon a website if it takes over 2 seconds
to load—every extra second affects your conversion.
Google considers fast loading speed a positive ranking
factor, so it’s crucial to take steps to improve this.
Google's PageSpeed Insights gives you a speed report and actionable
insights to ensure you have a mobile-friendly website.

Use Standardised Fonts

It can get frustrating for visitors trying to read small, stylised
fonts or waiting for fonts to load. Consider using fonts that
are easy to read, especially on smaller mobile screens.
For desktops, fonts should be at least 14px. The main content on mobile
should be around 16px—and remember to always test how it looks.

Optimise Images
Create the smallest size possible without losing quality. The
smaller bandwidth and data capacity on mobile means
larger images take more time to load and use more data.
If you choose to optimise your images using visual editing software, you
have to do so before uploading them to your website. On the
Hotelchamp eCommerce website builder, this is done automatically.

16
 Simplify Content
Mobile devices have less screen space; therefore, fewer
elements can be displayed. Try to condense text and
imagery as much as possible to get your point across.
Content may need to be sacrificed, but the mobile user who’s browsing
and booking through their phone isn’t interested in galleries of high-
resolution images and detailed descriptions of amenities.

Make Information Accessible

On a mobile device, the top of the screen is usually less
than three inches wide. Make sure all crucial information is
easily accessible to enhance the mobile user experience.
Ensure your contact information and booking button are prominently
displayed regardless of the page a visitor is on. To keep the rest of your
information organised and easy to find, utilise a burger menu—they
don’t take up much space and are expandable.

Remove Unnecessary Pop-ups

Pop-ups on mobile devices tend to cause frustration for
website visitors when executed poorly. Use pop-ups only
on the second page of a user's session, as search rankings
can be negatively impacted when a pop-up covers more
than one-third of the screen on the first page.
Hotelchamp's Smart Notifications are a great alternative to pop-ups; they
can be used to highlight key USPs or offers without negative impact.

Condense Forms
Forms can cause problems due to the shortened attention
span of mobile visitors. Only ask for essential information to
encourage engagement on smaller devices.
Make your forms as simple as possible for a mobile-friendly website
experience. Use large buttons and fewer text boxes so that it's easier to
complete form submissions.

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 Spotlight Your CTAs
CTA buttons should be obvious to see and easy to tap on. If
you have more than one CTA button on your page, decide
which is a higher priority and just focus on that one.
Most mobile visitors use their smartphones with only one hand, so
anything they can’t reach becomes a nuisance and is not user-friendly.
Ensure the button is large enough to be tapped with a thumb, and place
it in a strategic location, such as the bottom of the screen, for a mobile-
friendly website experience.

For more expert tips on making

your website mobile-friendly and
the common mistakes to avoid,
check out our webinar below.

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Your Page Content
When adding content, remember that "Less is more and
bigger is better". Our brain can only deal with 5 to 9 pieces
of information simultaneously. Yet, some hoteliers display
huge amounts of information that is impossible for anyone
to digest. Consider two things here:

Information overload
This is the effect visitors get when seeing (not reading) a
screen with vast amounts of information. If there is too
much visual clutter, they'll get overwhelmed and leave.

Big as opposed to small fonts

Make descriptions easier to read by using bigger fonts, a
good line height, and plenty of empty/white space. Always
remember—before reading your content, people see it.
And that's the first barrier to entry: the smaller the font, the
more challenging to get into reading mode.

Bold and Oversized OT TI

H

Typography
When text reaches a certain size, it becomes a graphic
element rather than part of the copy. On its own or paired
with smaller copy, bold and oversized typography creates a
striking first impression on your visitors and condenses your
main message, leading to even faster conversion.

19
Content That Drives Conversions
Your website is often the first touchpoint interested guests
see to learn more about your hotel. Regardless of who your
target audience is, you must ensure your website is always
performing at its best to achieve your ultimate goal: turning
online visitors into guests.

Adding content to your website is more than just importing

images, choosing a font or adding your logo. Logos and
favicons help to add your branding to your website. But to
drive high conversion rates, you need to use high-quality
images and copy. Do not confuse high quality with high
resolution—the latter can increase your page loading time,
impacting your bounce rate. Instead, ensure your images
are beautiful, eye-catching and accurately represent your
hotel and facilities.

Use copy to set yourself apart from your competition by

using your hotel's tone of voice. Avoid grammatical errors
and speak "You" language—talk to guests directly and
show how you can serve them. It's more compelling,
appealing and enticing than just talking about yourself.

Guests Trust OT TI
H

Fellow Guests
A healthy level of scepticism has developed amongst travellers.
They want to read honest reviews from people like them, who
have stayed at your hotel before. Social proof, like including
review snippets on your homepage or at key points in the
guest journey, can help your conversion. Guests are more likely
to book with a hotel that appears transparent and honest.

20
Adding Your Call to Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is essential for conversion. For hotels,
this comes in the form of a clickable button that encourages
visitors to take action and 'Book now'.

Making your CTA clear is the golden rule in website

optimisation. It should stand out from the rest of the page so
that your visitors know what action to take. Skipping this
important step will make your conversion rate suffer, and
you will lose out on direct bookings.

Do not overuse CTAs—including them everywhere

negatively impacts user experience.
Here are some key places to position your CTAs:
Landing pages: Once in the top right corner and once in
the centre of the page
Rooms page: A 'Book now' button below descriptions
On spa/restaurant pages: A 'Contact now' button
leading directly to your email address

After strategically
positioning your CTAs,
ensure that you add the
correct URLs to the
buttons. Of course,
depending on the type
of amenities you have
and what template
you’ve chosen, there
might also be links to
your restaurant or spa
that you need to update.

21
 Contact Information and Forms
'Book Now' buttons aren't the only CTAs on your website.
You also need to make it easy for your guests to get in touch
with you. Add your contact information on your template,
including your hotel’s email, phone number and address.
Make sure submissions from contact forms are sent to a
monitored email address, such as your reception or
reservations email. Update the confirmation message
to suit your brand tone of voice.

Email is a great way to

keep in touch with
your guests and send
them valuable
content, so this is a
good time to also set
up your email capture.
OT TI Capture emails
H

and automatically
sync them to your
CRM with Hotelchamp.

Adding Social Media Links

We live in a digital world, and your hotel's online presence is
critical for connecting with guests, receiving feedback and
collecting reviews. Make sure to link all of your social media
profiles to social icons on your website. If the template you
are using has more icons than you have channels, make sure
to delete the ones that are not in use.
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 SEO is Easier OT TI

P
With Hotelchamp
eCommerce
Search Edit your overall site or individual
Engine page SEO settings, such as
your Site Title and Description,
Optimisation which are used by search
engines to catalogue and
find your site.
Even with little to no budget or
technical skills, you can improve your
hotel's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
All you need is a good strategy, good content and a few
simple yet essential guidelines.

Know Your Market

Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. Focus on
your specific market segments. If you have many, focus on
the most important ones, but no more than two or three.
Families? Couples? Solo travellers? Business? Your call—but
be the specialist of that market.

How To Structure a
Good Basic SEO Setup
90% of SEO is content. The remaining 10% is the technical
part, which can destroy the effort you put into creating great
content if not done well. On the next four pages, we'll cover
the tips and tricks you should keep in mind to create
impactful SEO content.
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SEO-Friendly Content
Though SEO is free, it has a cost: time. Putting time into
quality content will get you to the top of search engines.
Everyone wants to be organically found on Google with
generic keywords like "hotel + [destination]". But Google
can't rank you for your destination if you don't have content
about it. You need to give people what they're looking for.

Should You Have a Blog?

When planning, travellers typically look for things to do, and
then they look for hotels that match their points of interest.
The competition for a high search engine (SE) ranking is
fierce, but if you're found by people searching for “things to
do in [destination]”, two things can happen:
Potential guests will land on your site because you have
the information they're looking for, and the odds they'll
choose you as their preferred hotel increase.
Some visitors will come to your site earlier in the research
phase and leave without booking. But a visitor on your
website is still closer to booking with you than someone
who has never heard of you. Retargeting campaigns can
help you convert those visitors at a later stage.

More reasons why your

hotel should have a blog
Businesses that prioritise blogging can see 13x the ROI of those that don't.
Sharing blog content helps fuel your marketing channels.
Blogs keep your website content fresh and is preferred by travellers who
are researching, plus, help improve discoverability on search engines.
Blogging builds authority and reputation. Even after booking, 95% of
travellers continue researching, so you can reach even more travellers.

Read more
24
Technical SEO
URL
Your homepage's URL is a no-brainer. When it comes to
other pages like your blogs, write your links in a way that
communicates the main message of the page.

Title
Your page title is the most visible part of search results—
thus, the most crucial thing to take care of. For your
homepage, use this four-element formula: Name + Location
+ Commercial key + USP/differentiating factor. Be aware,
though, that there is a cut-off limit around 50-60 characters.

Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are a summary of your page content. If
you don't write your own, Google will pull text from the
page to display in search results. For control over what is
displayed, write a summary for each page of your hotel
website and add it to your SEO settings.

Meta descriptions can be any length, but Google generally

limits snippets to 160 characters. Be short and concise, avoid
unnecessary lengthy texts and focus on keywords that you
know your users are most interested in.

25
On-Page SEO
Here are a couple of things you can do to further optimise
your pages for search engines.

Add Alt-Text for Images

This is an important step you can’t miss. Alt-text, short for
alternative text, is text added to images that shows if they
can’t load. Useful for SEO and site accessibility, alt-text
should describe the image with these purposes in mind.

Heading Hierarchy
Headings and subtitles are just as important as descriptive
texts because they tell search engines what the content of
your page is about. However,
using bold, italic and underlined
styling doesn't tell Google if it is a
heading or subtitle. Instead, an H1,
H2, etc., hierarchical structure
should be used across your site.

26
 Site SEO
Building Backlinks
Backlinks are links to your website from other websites.
Backlinks increase your site's authority and improve your
Google ranking so you can be found by a larger audience
of potential guests. It's also an excellent opportunity to build
a network with local tour operators, restaurants or bloggers
to create mutual benefits and link to one another's sites.

It's pretty simple: the greater the number of links that point
to a page, the more relevant it will be in Google's eyes. In
terms of SEO, internal and, more specifically, external links
are crucial components of your SEO ranking.

SSL Certificate
SSL certificates keep user data secure, verify website
ownership, prevent the creation of a fake version of the
site, and gain user trust. They are free and can be set up
with just one click. Google penalises sites without
SSL certificates, so this is a step you don’t want to miss.
With Hotelchamp eCommerce, an SSL certificate is
included in the setup of your site.

Measuring
Performance
To track your site’s performance, it’s important to set up
your Google Analytics tracking. If you don’t have a
Google Analytics account yet, you can learn how to
create one here. If you already have an account, you’ll
need your property ID to add to your site settings to start
measuring and tracking your website’s performance.

27
Accessibility around 22%
of all online users
There are 7.53 billion people in the have a disability
world, and 4.48 billion of them use the
Internet. That means that 58% of the
population has access to the Internet. Of these,
there are 1 billion people, around 22% of all online
users, who have a disability.
Your website needs to be accessible to all online visitors.
There are many ways you can make your website more
accessible, like adding alt-text to your images and ensuring
your website design can easily be used by screen readers.
You can also use tools, like accessiBe, to make your website
accessible and compliant with regulations.
Another thing to ask yourself is if online visitors can access
your website across different devices. Is your website
mobile and tablet friendly? It is important that your hotel’s
eCommerce site is available across
all kinds of technologies as you never
know how someone is viewing your
website or through which device.

28
 Ease of Use
The easier it is for your online visitors to
find the correct information they need, the
more likely they are to click on your CTA.

Make sure that you don’t clutter your website! You need to
ensure that your website is as user-friendly as possible. Try
not to include unnecessary images or information. Ensuring
your website is simple will help pave the way to frictionless
booking. An easily understandable and navigable online
experience makes all the difference.

Start by asking yourself: do you

need all the sections? Are you
highlighting your hotel's strong
points? Are the information and
pictures accurate and honest?

If you answered no to any of

these questions, don't worry. All
you need to do is make some
updates and changes. There is
nothing wrong with needing to
step in and tweak things. That's
a sign of strength in any hotel
or business, for that matter—
even after publishing your
website.

Being able to analyse, see

room for improvement and
then take the time to
implement the necessary
changes will lead to a
successful eCommerce site.
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FAQs and Your USPs
The more online visitors know about your hotel and its
offering, the more likely they will book with you. But guests
have many choices, and competition within the hotel sector
is fierce. It can be challenging to set yourself apart without
costing an arm and a leg, but it's essential to do all you can
to support potential guests in their decision-making.

Make your hotel's eCommerce presence more unique by

telling guests what they can expect from you. Go into detail
—further than just the amenities. Outline unique selling
points (USPs) and answer questions they haven't yet thought
of asking. Hotel guests want to know all there is to know
before making a booking. That is a fair request on their part,
so be sure to cater to it. Ask your reception team to help
you make a list of all FAQs and add it as a section to your
website. Guests reading it will feel calmer and trust you
before booking with you.

Turn Your OT TI
H

USPs Into a Story

Using the art of storytelling, the Terass Hôtel repositioned itself
as a Parisian icon. Once frequented by famous artists like Dali—
they created a new story by drawing on their rich history and
archival records. Located in Montmartre and firmly integrated
into the world of art, its conference facilities were turned into
"Ateliers", the rooms into artist dressing rooms, and the lobby
was redesigned to resemble a theatre foyer.
Storytelling brought The Terass Hôtel back to life.
Read more >

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Setting the Final Details
URL Redirects
Redirects allow you to automatically send traffic from one
URL to a different URL. When you launch your new site, you
might have a new URL structure and redirects help to avoid
broken links. For your old URLs, traffic clicking on these links
can be redirected to the right place on your new site.

Note: In the Hotelchamp eCommerce website builder, set these up by

adding redirects manually or importing a CSV file with multiple redirects.

Adjust 404 Error Pages

If someone encounters a broken link to your site, they will
be redirected to your 404 error page.

Note: In the Hotelchamp eCommerce website builder, you can

customise your 404 page to reflect your branding and tone of voice.

Legal Aspects and Privacy Policy

Depending on where you are located, it's important to have
a clear understanding of your legal responsibilities when
creating a website. Look into what is required by local law
before you publish your site. Two common aspects are
privacy pages and cookie notifications. A privacy page
informs users of what kind of information is collected, how
it's stored and the rights of site users and owners. Cookie
notifications notify users about your site's use of cookies.

Note: In the Hotelchamp eCommerce website builder, you can add a

privacy policy page and cookie notifications under the Settings page.

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Previewing
You're almost done with creating your
new hotel website! Once you've added
in all your styling, images and content,
you're ready to start testing.

The last thing to do before publishing is to preview how the

website will appear on tablet, desktop or mobile devices, as
well as test all the buttons and links you've added. This will
help to avoid any issues that your
website users might face when using
your website. This is a good time
to ask different people in your
team to test as multiple sets of
eyes can often pick up things If you're using the Hotelchamp
eCommerce website builder,
that could go unnoticed. all the templates are
O IT T responsive, so using
H

the preview option,

you can automatically
see how they will look.

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 Publishing
And you've done it!
You've successfully built a new website
for your hotel, previewed and tested it.
Now it's time to publish it out to the
world and celebrate this amazing
milestone with your team.

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 Post-Publishing Details
Submit a Site Map to Search Engines
Imagine creating a carbon copy of your entire hotel
website, with all the pages, content and links. A sitemap is
just that, a copy of your website, with the only difference
being that a sitemap is written in a different language. In
simple words, a sitemap translates your website into a
language that is easier to read and interpret by Google and
other SEs like Bing and Yahoo. Though it's highly technical,
there are tools that create a sitemap for you, automatically
and for free, in just one click. Moreover, once in place,
maintaining a sitemap requires nearly zero effort.

Optimise Performance
Once your site is live, you can check the performance of
your site using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Our website
builder automatically optimises your site, including images,
videos and code, for the best performance, but it’s still a
good idea to check to see if any other issues
come up. If you need to make any
adjustments, make sure you
republish your site so that
your changes are live.
When using Hotelchamp
eCommerce, on publish, your
sitemap is automatically submitted to
Google and Bing so that it is indexed.
This means that guests will
find your new website in OT TI
H

search engine results. If you’re

using another website builder,
you may have to do this manually.
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Building a website can be complicated and
expensive—but Hotelchamp can do it for
you in just weeks at a fraction of the cost of
typical website projects.
In under a month, our team of experts can
build and get your new highly-converting,
fully-responsive and SEO-optimised hotel
website ready to launch.

Find out more

35
Even More Resources to Set
Your Website Up for Success
What To Include In Your Hotel’s Brand
Guide

The 10 Best Ways To Ask For Reviews

The Future Of Hotel ECommerce
The 6 Biggest Hotel Website Mistakes
To Avoid

Why No-Code Website Design Is The

Future
5 Creative, Free & Reliable Ways To
Drive More Traffic To Your Website
5 Reasons Why Your Hotel Should
Have A Blog

7 ECommerce Tips For Hotels To

Increase Conversion

36