Travel industry is evolving with time and is one of the biggest industries in the world. With the increasing number of online booking and online queries there is a rapid increase in the online travel agents offering flights, hotels and holiday services to their travellers.
Apart from routine web design and development standards and checklist, Travel portal development companies and clients must understand the below mentioned points and give importance to them during the planning phase, so that the best can be expected from these website.
The points are as below:-
1. Working model :- Travel websites can function in different ways
a. Creating their own data base and fetching data from the database and sharing the information with clients.
b. Fetching information from a third party database which maintains the database of airlines, hotels and holidays from around the world.
c. Working only for a specific segment or integrates the services like
i. Flights
ii. Hotels
iii. Cruises
iv. Holidays
v. Flight – Hotels-Holidays-Cruises-Car Rental etc.
d. Ticketing with manual intervention which provides a customized package for booking.
Once the mode of operation is selected on the basis of the same, it will be decided whether the API will be integrated or internal module will be created where in some companies manage their own database.
For API integration we can work out in 2 ways like:-
a) Black Label:- In which the link of the 3rd part will be visible to the user as they see the search results.
b) White Labelling: - In which the link of 3rd party will not be visible and only the link of your own site is visible to the visitor.
2. Planning and consideration for change in website theme and online marketing: - No one likes to see the same paint on the walls forever, and thus changing as per the mood of visitors is a good way to be fresh and improve your appeal to them. This must be told to the design team so that this provision was considered and the website’s home page can be changed on different occasions like Christmas, world cup matches, Football, Olympics, winters, summers, snowfall etc.
3. Technology: - Which technology to choose is a question that depends on the competency and availability of development team, which keeps on changing with the change in technology and frameworks. We recommend PHP for the design for easily available skills set, open source and compatibility with PHP.
4. Content Development: - This is one of the most important points, and the performance of the website majorly depends on the content quality and how engaging the content is for the target visitors. This has to be initiate right from the beginning and once the content development team is selected he must share his inputs on the landing pages content and how to include call to action to those pages which helps in generate revenues and reducing the bounce rate of our website.
5. Optimized Design and Development:- Right from the time of the design and development of travel website, designers and developers must consider all the guidelines, policies and procedures of the Onsite and Onpage parameters of search engines which further has many technical field to cater like Tags (h1, h2, Alt etc), Title, Meta, Description, Og, and more.
6. Deciding the Domain name: - Domain name becomes your brand name, so choose wisely. A crisp and meaningful name is always appreciated by masses when compared to a long name. The need to include the name of business, industry or trade is not more needed and is also made public by Google and thus you can choose a name of your choice. Another important aspect is to whether choose a dot com or country specific domain.
7. Server, Hosting and SSL: – It is recommended to decide which hosting and server is best for the site considering the data, images, video and the no. Of visitors expected on the site. Once decided , we can park it for a time being and must purchase it at the end , when the design, development, Onsite, Onpage etc are over and we are ready to launch and go live. This integration usually don’t take much of a time, but at times it also takes considerable amount of time because different servers acts differently and need minor tweaking to run things smoothly. SSL is a must where database and customer information is involved, again this can be bought along with the server and hosting and included as site development is over.
8. Sitemap: – If your websites total pages are more which usually in case of travel portals and reaches from 500 to thousands of pages. A paid sitemap helps and regenerate sitemaps automatically as the pages are included in future. Again this can be purchased and integrated just before the launch and when the complete testing is done.
9. Payment Gateway Integration: - Payment Gateway integration will cover selection of the 3rd party payment gateway tool which can be selected based on your target geography or a global 3rd party Gateway if you are covering visitors from around the world. This has to be decided from the beginning and tested in advance so that while integration any challenges is not faced with respect to its working.
10. Other parameters: - Apart from the front end the admin part and the back end also needs attention. This includes roles, rights, privacy policy, Accounts handling etc. This also covers internal communication for transactions to admin and the visitor.
We are sure that if you consider these points while developing your Travel website then it will be of real benefit for your online travel business.
Hope you liked the blog.
Thanks
Team Sankalp
Apart from routine web design and development standards and checklist, Travel portal development companies and clients must understand the below mentioned points and give importance to them during the planning phase, so that the best can be expected from these website.
The points are as below:-
1. Working model :- Travel websites can function in different ways
a. Creating their own data base and fetching data from the database and sharing the information with clients.
b. Fetching information from a third party database which maintains the database of airlines, hotels and holidays from around the world.
c. Working only for a specific segment or integrates the services like
i. Flights
ii. Hotels
iii. Cruises
iv. Holidays
v. Flight – Hotels-Holidays-Cruises-Car Rental etc.
d. Ticketing with manual intervention which provides a customized package for booking.
Once the mode of operation is selected on the basis of the same, it will be decided whether the API will be integrated or internal module will be created where in some companies manage their own database.
For API integration we can work out in 2 ways like:-
a) Black Label:- In which the link of the 3rd part will be visible to the user as they see the search results.
b) White Labelling: - In which the link of 3rd party will not be visible and only the link of your own site is visible to the visitor.
2. Planning and consideration for change in website theme and online marketing: - No one likes to see the same paint on the walls forever, and thus changing as per the mood of visitors is a good way to be fresh and improve your appeal to them. This must be told to the design team so that this provision was considered and the website’s home page can be changed on different occasions like Christmas, world cup matches, Football, Olympics, winters, summers, snowfall etc.
3. Technology: - Which technology to choose is a question that depends on the competency and availability of development team, which keeps on changing with the change in technology and frameworks. We recommend PHP for the design for easily available skills set, open source and compatibility with PHP.
4. Content Development: - This is one of the most important points, and the performance of the website majorly depends on the content quality and how engaging the content is for the target visitors. This has to be initiate right from the beginning and once the content development team is selected he must share his inputs on the landing pages content and how to include call to action to those pages which helps in generate revenues and reducing the bounce rate of our website.
5. Optimized Design and Development:- Right from the time of the design and development of travel website, designers and developers must consider all the guidelines, policies and procedures of the Onsite and Onpage parameters of search engines which further has many technical field to cater like Tags (h1, h2, Alt etc), Title, Meta, Description, Og, and more.
6. Deciding the Domain name: - Domain name becomes your brand name, so choose wisely. A crisp and meaningful name is always appreciated by masses when compared to a long name. The need to include the name of business, industry or trade is not more needed and is also made public by Google and thus you can choose a name of your choice. Another important aspect is to whether choose a dot com or country specific domain.
7. Server, Hosting and SSL: – It is recommended to decide which hosting and server is best for the site considering the data, images, video and the no. Of visitors expected on the site. Once decided , we can park it for a time being and must purchase it at the end , when the design, development, Onsite, Onpage etc are over and we are ready to launch and go live. This integration usually don’t take much of a time, but at times it also takes considerable amount of time because different servers acts differently and need minor tweaking to run things smoothly. SSL is a must where database and customer information is involved, again this can be bought along with the server and hosting and included as site development is over.
8. Sitemap: – If your websites total pages are more which usually in case of travel portals and reaches from 500 to thousands of pages. A paid sitemap helps and regenerate sitemaps automatically as the pages are included in future. Again this can be purchased and integrated just before the launch and when the complete testing is done.
9. Payment Gateway Integration: - Payment Gateway integration will cover selection of the 3rd party payment gateway tool which can be selected based on your target geography or a global 3rd party Gateway if you are covering visitors from around the world. This has to be decided from the beginning and tested in advance so that while integration any challenges is not faced with respect to its working.
10. Other parameters: - Apart from the front end the admin part and the back end also needs attention. This includes roles, rights, privacy policy, Accounts handling etc. This also covers internal communication for transactions to admin and the visitor.
We are sure that if you consider these points while developing your Travel website then it will be of real benefit for your online travel business.
Hope you liked the blog.
Thanks
Team Sankalp