Mar
4
Well that's got today's alliteration out of the way.
It's amazing how many hotel websites use alliteration (consecutive words starting with the same letter) and think it will be entertaining. It usually isn't.
Inspiration for today's muse comes from my new pal Andrea. She's a skilled copywriter who tells me that,
"...every word on the page has to earn its living."
On the web, you can't afford to dress pages up with fine words and fancy formats. You can put them there if you like of course - it's your website after all. People just don't read 'em.
It's amazing how many hotel websites use alliteration (consecutive words starting with the same letter) and think it will be entertaining. It usually isn't.
Inspiration for today's muse comes from my new pal Andrea. She's a skilled copywriter who tells me that,
"...every word on the page has to earn its living."
On the web, you can't afford to dress pages up with fine words and fancy formats. You can put them there if you like of course - it's your website after all. People just don't read 'em.
So how do you give yourself a fighting chance of getting people to read your web pages?
You need to deploy two important techniques with your words:
Be Relevant and
Be Different
Relevant is really important to your customers. Why? Because relevant is all about them. Make your pages so that they reflect the needs of your customers. Don't try to do it all on one page - you can't be relevant to everyone all the time. Use different pages to achieve different things.
Building relevance demands a bit of preparation. You need to understand who your customer is and what they want. How do you do that? Ask some of them...
Relevance is what keeps people reading. They keep reading because you're saying things they are interested in. Remember your first duty in running your website? The duty to inform the reader? People can only be informed if they are motivated to read what you've published. That motivation is born of the words being interesting. Interesting words are those relevant to the way the customer thinks, acts and the things they want.
What about Different? Let's make the word a bit bigger - we're actually aiming for differentiation. Differentiation is what makes you stand out from the crowd. It is the primary reason why people should book a room with you and not with anybody else. Get differentiation right and you can reward yourself with higher room rates and/or more bookings.
Fail to make an effort with differentiation and you can charge what you like - nobody is going to book your rooms unless you're the only hotel still selling them.
Differentiation is what persuades customers to make a booking.
To make your hotel stand out from the crowd you need to tell the reader why you are different whilst keeping your message relevant to their needs.
You don't need to go wild with this, but you do need to design those sources of differentiation in to the fabric of your service. There's no point in talking about it beautifully on your website and then not deliver it when the customer visits.
With differentiation, you want to make sure customers know who you are and how you fit in to their lives. Note their lives. Not yours. If you can illustrate that your services have a close fit with what your customers need, then you've got a good chance of making a sale.
You need to deploy two important techniques with your words:
Be Relevant and
Be Different
Relevant is really important to your customers. Why? Because relevant is all about them. Make your pages so that they reflect the needs of your customers. Don't try to do it all on one page - you can't be relevant to everyone all the time. Use different pages to achieve different things.
Building relevance demands a bit of preparation. You need to understand who your customer is and what they want. How do you do that? Ask some of them...
Relevance is what keeps people reading. They keep reading because you're saying things they are interested in. Remember your first duty in running your website? The duty to inform the reader? People can only be informed if they are motivated to read what you've published. That motivation is born of the words being interesting. Interesting words are those relevant to the way the customer thinks, acts and the things they want.
What about Different? Let's make the word a bit bigger - we're actually aiming for differentiation. Differentiation is what makes you stand out from the crowd. It is the primary reason why people should book a room with you and not with anybody else. Get differentiation right and you can reward yourself with higher room rates and/or more bookings.
Fail to make an effort with differentiation and you can charge what you like - nobody is going to book your rooms unless you're the only hotel still selling them.
Differentiation is what persuades customers to make a booking.
To make your hotel stand out from the crowd you need to tell the reader why you are different whilst keeping your message relevant to their needs.
You don't need to go wild with this, but you do need to design those sources of differentiation in to the fabric of your service. There's no point in talking about it beautifully on your website and then not deliver it when the customer visits.
With differentiation, you want to make sure customers know who you are and how you fit in to their lives. Note their lives. Not yours. If you can illustrate that your services have a close fit with what your customers need, then you've got a good chance of making a sale.
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