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Hello and welcome to our latest INNsight training e-blast. Our weekly e-blasts will highlight and educate you about an existing feature of your websitePowered by INNsight or relevant hotel digital marketing topic.
By now, everyone who owns or manages a hotel, Inn, B&B, or Vacation Rental has heard about the latest algorithm changes by Google and Bing that completely turned the balance as we know it, on its digital end. Hoteliers are being forced out of complacency with a website that isn't mobile or user-friendly as well. As of April, Google and Bing will penalize websites that are not mobile friendly thereby denying potential guests the ability to book a reservation.
In today's mobile environment, more than 64% of users today browse and make purchasing decisions on a mobile device. Mobile web access is a dominating trend in our current internet economy, with many sites now seeing 30 percent (or more) of their traffic on mobile devices.
On any mobile device, a website is considered to be fast when content that is visible without scrolling is rendered immediately. Delivering a lightning fast mobile web response has proven to keep users engaged with the content, increasing the conversion rate and reducing the chance of abandonment.
So the big question is, do you go with a responsive design or adaptive design? A separate mobile website with an innovative design will achieve a high conversion rate. However, the ultimate goal for any website should be "happy users" which will always lead to more conversions.
People convert if their mobile experience is better and faster. The whole point of creating adaptive sites is to create a functional optimal user experience for a continually expanding number of web-enabled devices. Guests need to effectively navigate your website on whatever device they happen to be using. You must create a contextually aware, flexible experience for visitors to your site irrespective of device: desktop, laptop, phablet, tablet, or phone.
The "Desktop" is gone. A device of the past like analog recording equipment or the rotary dial phone. Creating a mobile-optimized site, be it responsive or adaptive, is necessary in this new mobile world order.
Squeezing your desktop content onto a phone and calling it optimized, isn't necessarily delivering an optimized user experience. Your standalone content needs to be adapted for the size of every device and network latency. Visitors to your mobile website want to connect with your hotel on their terms. Even through high traffic surges. If you choose responsive design rather than adaptive make sure performance is your primary feature. Performance is what makes a responsive mobile web experience a great experience.
In plain English, it is when the server sends the same information to every device but includes coding information that allows the device to work out how to display the page on its screen. It will change fluidly and respond to fit any screen or device size. Designing and coding responsive design is much more complicated than just building two different sites or having an adaptive website.
It is an entirely separate design utilizing progressive enhancement, design methods that focus on the user and not the browser. Simple and user-friendly. Easy to look at and simple to navigate. No squeezing and pinching the screen to see what you need. A user-friendly adaptive design will change to fit a predetermined set of screens and device sizes. An adaptive website requires two sets of html files; one for desktop computing environments and another for mobile environments. The Search Engines prefer responsive because only one set of code files need to be crawled and indexed, reducing their load and costs, however there is currently no penalty for having a mobile website with either adaptive or responsive approach.
Both responsive and adaptive designs allow websites to be viewedin mobile devices and various screen sizes. They differ in their delivery. Responsive web design relies on grids that are flexible and fluid and based on one set of HTML files and code while adaptive web design relies on predefined screen sizes and two sets of HTML files, of which routing happens depending on screen size.
The difference is coding. Adaptive web design takes an approach that is streamlined and layered, utilizing scripting to assist with adapting to various devices and screen sizes. Responsive web design requires more coding and implementation strategies with the fluid grids, CSS, and flexible foundations.
Current responsive design does have limits in functionality because coding a web application for all screensizes may require simplifying the usability for all screen sizes thereby creating limitations in functionality. In the case that there is a lot of functionality on a website, adaptive web design and code delivery might be required.
Your desktop site may render fine on smartphones, however choosing to offer the public a focused experience makes all the difference to the people visiting your mobile website. Conversion rates dramatically plummet if visitors cannot complete what they want because your site takes 25 seconds or longer to load. Conversion rates also fall when interactions are awkward and broken.
If you do not have a mobile experience, your bookability will suffer. And now with Google and Bing trying to ensure that their search experience is tuned for mobile, your website discoverability will also suffer.
A better mobile experience parlays into more conversions, more engagement, and a MUCH better chance that the user will walk away feeling warm and fuzzy about your property and your customer service.
Because INNsight is an Award-Winning High-Technology company, coding responsive or adaptive design is just part of the Cutting Edge Technology we deliver to each of our clients. Custom responsive coding requires a sophisticated implementation of the very latest techniques that some Digital Marketing providers lack the skill to produce.
At INNsight, we not only offer free custom designed websites that are fully mobile friendly; responsive or adaptive - working on all devices, we built a proprietary system from the ground up offering a full cloud-based, complete end-to-end digital marketing system for properties of every size. We do not provide piecemeal work, layering services upon service providers. The INNsight platform offers a solid foundation providing the most complete and cost-effective marketing solution in the industry. We continuously innovate and add new features at no cost while taking the guess work out of your digital marketing. With INNsight, you will not need to worry about writing content, URLs, tweeting, Blog posting, CRM, social media, email, hosting, or new technologies.
We take a multi-channel marketing approach, local-social-mobile-web, to ensure the success of your property; delivering a user-friendly system that seamlessly orchestrates the experiences across channels and applications, including operational management, analytics measurement, while driving customer engagement and the conversion of visitors into guests.
We work to be your digital marketing partner.
To learn more about INNsight go to: www.INNsight.com/aboutus.
Remember, with INNsight we are always available for you, we are always here to help. Please feel free to email us at:sales@innsight.comor call: 415-741-4113
Thank You,
The INNsight Team
