If you are developing a website for short/long-term vacation rentals, this blog post may help you.
In this blog post, we have shared 9 essential features that your website developer must incorporate into your vacation rental website.
#1 Attractive design
The most important aspect of your website is its design.
If you want your potential customers to stay on your website for longer, then you must pay attention to the design of your website.
Especially, when there is a lot of competition in your industry, creating a design that stands out is rather mandatory.
At the same time, your web designer shouldn’t create something that’s out of the box and hard to understand & navigate for conventional users. If that’s the case, no matter how good your website design is, you will still get a high bounce rate as well as a low conversation rate.
Recommended post: Here are some website design tips for a single-page site
#2 Organised listings
Your vacation rental website may have dozens of properties to show. It is, therefore, important to have a user-friendly & organized listing of the properties.
Your potential customers shouldn’t find it difficult to browse and book the properties.
Perhaps your website developer can also add a filtration feature to the listings page so that the users can sort the properties according to their specific needs & preferences.
#3 Robust booking system
If you’re thinking about starting a vacation rental website for your home or for another property, you absolutely need to use a robust booking system.
You have to be able to take bookings from customers, particularly if you’re going to be charging them for the opportunity to stay on your property.
The booking system is the most important part of your vacation rental website because it is what drives revenue.
It’s what allows you to bring in money. Without it, you have no way to turn your website into a business.
Your website developer can integrate an intuitive booking system with your website to facilitate your potential customers making their bookings.
#4 Reviews & bookings
When your potential customers see the rating and reviews of your existing clients, they are more likely to place their bookings. This is because they are able to see that you have plenty of past clients who were happy with the services you provided them, which gives them an idea of what to expect from you.
It is, therefore, essential for all the website builders to add a reviews & rating section to the vacation rental website that they develop.
#5 A clear CTA
When you have a prominent CTA on your website, it encourages users to make a purchase or sign up for your service, or whatever it is you’re trying to get them to do. Every professional website developer understands & agrees on this.
For any rental vacation website, a clear call to action is even mandatory.
Your CTA should be displayed prominently in your listing and should be consistent throughout your site. A prominent CTA encourages the users to click and make their bookings.
#6 Responsive booking forms
If you’re running a vacation rental website, you need to be using a responsive booking form.
A responsive booking form is one that changes its layout depending on the size of the screen it’s being viewed on.
Most of your potential customers use their mobile devices to make bookings. Therefore, it’s important for your web developer to ensure that your booking form is responsive.
Recommended post: 7 Things to take care of for your responsive website design
#7 Back-office system
The back office system of your vacation rental website will allow you to view & download all the bookings, customers, transactions, etc.
Your backend system will also allow you to manage the property details that may include the room pictures, price, availability, etc.
Not all web developers build a website with an intuitive back-office system or backend. As a result, the website owners may not be able to manage their websites themselves. And for every small change or update, they will have to hire a web developer and pay them to make those changes.
#8 Popular payment methods
When you build a vacation rental website for your business, you also have to ensure that you are accepting payments using popular payment methods.
If your potential customers are not able to make the payment using their preferred payment methods, it may result in the loss of revenue for your business.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Ask your website developer to add all the majorly accepted payment methods such as PayPal, Credit/Debit Cards, BitCoin, etc.
Recommended post: 4 Best Payment Gateways To Use With Your WordPress Website
