hotelslivetogo

Hi
I have just started a hotel booking website and are looking for some assistance in web design and seo as well as feedback.

I have had about 1000 visitors the last month and the bounce rate is 75%.

If there are web designers that think they can spruce the site up let me know.
Or anyone with general comments please comment

The link to the site is in my signature.

I am also looking for assistance with seo if you look at the alexa backlinks for my site you will see that the quality of current backlinks is pretty good , do I still need more? Being a hotel booking site I have some stiff opposition to get google keywords seen. I am currently trying to get keywords 'city' hotels listed highly (eg los angeles hotels, new york hotels). do i need to find longer keywords and if so what range of google monthly searches would you be looking for. I also have a facebook page which has 1700 likes.

Regards
Ron

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

GeorgR.

I only took a very quick look at your site, the overall "design" is ok.

But there are issues. For example, on the start site it shows a list of hotels but you can only click on the buttons, not on the blue text. (Those look like links but are not clickable)

When you click the button "select" a pop-up windows comes up, but you are "trapped" in this window since you cannot close it or hit ESC to close the window.

Button placement and colors are not optimal, you have some buttons like "Continue Booking" which are placed not very well...and some of the buttons, like "change room" are not obvious as clickable buttons. So what I am saying is that site-navigation would also need an overhaul, not only SEO.

Edit: Ok stating the obvious, this is obviously the reason you're looking for a designer to improve your site

momtraders

The logo needs to be redone, and the pictures need to be updated. Pictures are your biggest selling point, so they need to be big, colorful and inviting. I would even create pictures for each of the links, because that will get you some click throughs.

hotelslivetogo

I need to make the hotel list clickable.

will fix this by adding another button that will continue onto hotel info without entering dates.

do you mean have another continue booking button at the bottom of the page as well?

And yes the change room button needs improving maybe "change room selection"

George thankyou this is exactly the type of feed back I am looking for.

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

Steve Wells

Need new logo, pics, colors, etc, and some technical stuff redone...

The site looks generic and UNTRUSTWORTHY which will turn people off, when they are booking they want assurance that everything is going to go smoooooooth...

hotelslivetogo

As you can see my design skills are not fantastic the logo I made with some logo software I purchased online 8 years ago. I am ok at the programming side of things but design has a long way to go.

I am looking for a website for royalty free pictures, do you know of any?

Most of the other hotel booking sites have the big pictures on the front page as you say. I am going to add just a picture for each promotion that is run on the homepage instead of the list of hotels in the promotion.

Thanks for your comments again exactly the feedback I am looking for.

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

hotelslivetogo

Hi Steve
You have hit the nail on the head, with the visits I am getting I believe you are correct. That is why this thread was titled "Is my site professional enough?".
Can you assist or quote me to make it more professional? PM me details

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

WebdevelopmentGroup

Add me on skype: webdevelopmentgroup
could use a solid hand for sure.

WILL -

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v2informatics

I agree with members get your logo redone , update some more pics , try to make some social connections for your site that will bring some more traffic to your site.

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sams_dxny

These are the top hotel booking sites in the world

Orbitz Travel: Airline Tickets, Cheap Hotels, Car Rentals, Vacations & Cruises
Orbitz Travel: Airline Tickets, Cheap Hotels, Car Rentals, Vacations & Cruises
Booking.com: 370,430 hotels worldwide. 24+ million hotel reviews.

Please check its alexa.

Now How to start a hotel booking website?

At presently 100% of the hotel bookings are gone through these top players. There are almost 40 top players there.

All these site providing high end user experience. Many of these site can access through smartphone apps or mobile too.

I have seen so many pages and data in your website. If I am doing your web design or seo I will split this project into 3 major section.

1) I want to get the attention from the travel community.

This will be my primary target .This is the only area I will focus for seo.

From the design point of view, I will create a new user experience/ layout in your website to get the attention of from the travelers.

I might offer gifts or start interactive corner where travelers can exchange their travel experience etc. I will personally contact travelers and introduce the new site to them.

And through a Better newsletter campaign and social media policy. I will connect your website with 1000 registered users with in a year. It is easy to get 1000 travelers with in one year.( only you need smart Idea. )

2) In the next year or after you get 1000 registered user: We will contact hotels personally and request better price and distribute that special packages or price to these 1000 register users. In the website these 1000 people ( core travellers group) will connect with your social media channels. so when some one likes anything from your page it reflects their page and it will spread automatically.

we will provide quality contents and user experience that will engage customer more that 12 second in your website.if 80% of the visit spending more that 5 second your bounce rate will reduce . In that way search engine consider your website is genuine.

3) There are many hotel booking engine in online. Some of them are monthly 24 USD and Flexible to maintain. Many offer great commission too.


SEO:
It is very hard to reach in top of the goole for travel related keywords. First start a simple site and find and create your core travelers group and promote the site through various campaigns and offers for these group.

Feel free to contact me in case if you need more advice.

Thank you.

Pramod
[B][URL="http://quickbeespro.com"]Website Design| UI|UX
SKYPE:pramod_sethu

laurencewins

I had a look at the Melbourne listings and I have some feedback for you.
Victoria's abbreviation is VIC, not VI. You also need to put spaces between words and abbreviations there.
You also have some listing suburbs wrong there. George St is East Melbourne, not Melbourne (just one example.). There are others there too. You may confuse and lose people with false information.

Overall, your heading that says "this week's promotions" is where you have an error.
Week's needs an apostrophe.

Cheers, Laurence. Read my Warriors for Hire ad.
Writer/Editor/Proofreader. Place orders.

JodyRossDeane

I find myself agreeing with many of the Warriors above on this.

The site needs a complete redesign.

As for SEO, you're looking at $700 to $1000 minimum to start an effective SEO campaign.
I've launched many sites and seen clients and friends do the same: tried many cheap providers on the forum and other forums, failed, seem some success, failed again and wasted months of valuable time and dollars on rubbish thinking and unproven services.

If it's worth doing AT ALL, then it's worth doing REALLY WELL: in this case that means doing it professionally and not wincing at spending some good money on it.

Hope this helps.

If you need quality SEO work doing that gets results, look no further
than here --->> jodyrossdeane.co.uk | Digital Marketing

(that goes for web design too)

Jody

hotelslivetogo

Thankyou again for all the responses
From all the feedback I have got I have attempted to create a new logo with the software I have



Could you please let me know if you like this logo and if I should go ahead with it.

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

Johnny12345

Here are some of the problems I found...

1) When I went to your site, I was met by a form and some listings. Apparently, I'm supposed to automatically know what the site is about, what it will do for me, how it works, and why I would want to use it over all the other competitors. That's a HUGE mistake. The FIRST THING they should see is some sales copy that explains those things.

2) You also need a professional logo designed. (One option is to go to 99designs.com and pay to run a contest.)

3) Where are your about, contact, and privacy pages? Your site looks amateurish and does NOT inspire confidence or trust. If they don't trust you, they won't buy from you.

4) The second time I went to your site, none of the hotels in the right column loaded. It was blank. You need reliable programming.

5) You also need better pictures -- beautiful pictures that make the prospect want to book that hotel.

6) In addition, your colors are poor. That greenish color is just plain ugly.

Hope that helps.

John

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mkarmocha

The overall look and the structure of site needs to enhanced as in today's date the site needs to be more appealing to convince the user . The site color combination needs re work.

I am User Interface designer having more than 7 years of experience in designing and creating web interface targeting potential customers and user.

savidge4

Right now I would put the thoughts of SEO to the side. Your site is an affiliate site as it is, in order to gain any ROI on your SEO you need to develop stickiness. It needs its own personality. You color scheme really is not that far off when you look at Orbitz, Travelocity, lasvegas etc. the only stand out I found in the market is hotels.com with the classic red white and black. How your site is not as good as above mentioned is that your site is pretty much mono, and not mono chromatic. You need to introduce other shades of blue to highlight and draw interest.

Which leads me to a major point, your site is a affiliate site. You need to find every readme file you can locate about how to alter the look of a HotelClub/Orbitz site you can find. There are easy changes - Center your page, add some color, Think about introducing a landing page. For the sake of SEO later build multiple themed landing pages Snow Resorts, Sun resorts, Cali, Florida, Asia, Europe etc.

The easy part is already done for you. The product is there. It is now learning how to manipulate the information you have into a form you can sell. - Make it yours - develop your page, get the stickiness, then go for SEO, and get the ROI you are wanting.

hotelslivetogo

Hi everyone who has responded to this thread, I have taken on board all comments and have updated the site quite a bit with new logo, more pictures, and some small programming issues. Added about, privacy, terms, etc pages as well. I am looking for some feedback on the new design and then I can move onto the seo if all is well. Tell me what you think (site link is in signature)
Thanks heaps

Hotels Live To Go - Hotel Accommodation

savidge4

Hmm hmm hmm. You have been busy haven't you? Its moving in the right direction. Things just aren't lining up right. This is hard to explain hahaha Your Image flip needs to be smaller The vertical line/column that your search boxes are in needs to goto the left to line up with the far right of the "top hotel destinations USA" button. ahhhhhhh this is hard!

I urge you to goto vegas dot com and look at that layout. Search boxes to the left, your image flip where they have the sales links to the right. Down below that they have 4 boxes with a end cap banner. I would replace the 4 boxes on your site with broad scope destination links IE Europe, Snow escape, Sun and relax, and Hawaii. the bottom banner would be to "explore the world" (You can change these seasonally or as things are happening IE Bike week, Coachella festival what ever.

From that page you can then list hotels and destinations all you want, you have narrowed down the search, narrowing down your customers choices! By doing this on a travel site, you are creating investment in time.. its a powerful thing, the longer they stay the higher percentage of converting.

These second level pages also make for better SEO, it starts targeting your keywords, from hotels to Snowshoe hotels or Tahoe hotels etc. The more exacting you get the better the results.

Hope that helps!

Peter Lessard

Hi Ron

This will be a great learning experience for you and that is always a good thing!

Now for a reality check.

You have entered one of the most competitive niches in the world and 99.9% of all sales are booked from trust and reviews. You could have a chance of making money if you mined down into a specific sub set of either place or type of traveler and became the recognized expert on that subject and had a ton of user reviews. Things like animal friendly hotels, best hotels for disabled, best hotels for seniors, best hotels in Cancun Mexico etc..

To try to just generically compete and rank for terms like hotels in New York is a BAD idea.
Why?
Its simple.
Getting a ranking is like buying a piece of real estate.
It has a cost in time, money and effort.
It is also a never ending bidding war for that spot.
Someone who wants it more can take it from you.
Now here is the catch.
The people that always stay at the top for certain phrases do so because they make more money than if their competitor stays at that spot therefore they can spend more to keep it.
Not sure if that makes sense?
In other words you could drop your life savings or all of your time ranking for 10 of these phrases but your brand and site will simply not make you much money.
A competitor with high trust (booking.com) ranks for the same phrases and makes a fortune.
They can therefore throw absurd amounts of money at keeping those spots.

I have worked 100k + online marketing initiatives so I say this from experience.
The question is never is it possible to rank for something.
The REAL question is will it be sustainable against all the competitors based on their sales conversion and budgets and will your efforts make you money.
You can do all this and rank for these phrases and even though that would be a major home run you actually will not be well compensated or you could hit a sub niche or different niche, rank for easier phrases and make absurd money.

I am sure you have heard of the term go for the low hanging fruit?
This is NOT it!
But as I said it is a great learning experience, ask me how I know ;-)

Matt Broody

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