Imagine you’re planning a trip to Puerto Rico and you’ve been browsing the web for tour and activity ideas. You’ve found a couple of tours that take guests to popular waterfalls in El Yunque Rainforest and you’re ready to book one.

You search for tour operators that lead waterfall hikes and find a website that looks promising. But when you get to the homepage, the waterfall hikes are nowhere to be found. You see walking tours, snorkeling tours, and more, and you can’t tell what this tour operator is really known for. Eventually, you click back to the search engine results page (SERP) to browse some different websites.

Chances are, any potential customer that goes through a search process like the one described above will get frustrated because they cannot determine what a specific company specializes in. Your website is your #1 opportunity to communicate online and customer experience on your website is paramount. Nobody wants to click around a site and try to figure out on their own which tour or activity is the most popular or offers the best value. As a tour operator, you know which of your activities draw the biggest crowds or will fill up quickly, so make sure to communicate that to searchers.

Set yourself up for success

Make sure customers can quickly and easily learn about what makes your company stand out from the pack. By featuring your best-selling or most popular activity on the homepage of your website you instantly give people what they’re looking for, and it leads to more bookings.

By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to determine whether or not you’ve featured your best-selling activity in a prominent way, and how you can improve its visibility throughout your website.

Why feature your best-selling activity on your website?

Make navigation easier for potential consumers

Don’t leave your customers endlessly scrolling. When people land on your homepage, your main activity or the service that makes your company so popular should stand out and be easy to find. This way, there are no questions about what kind of company you are and what activities you offer.

Increase conversions with a book button

Your best-selling tour or activity is the best seller for a reason — guests rave about it on social media or leave good reviews, and the activity is well-known in your area — so it’s likely already generating many bookings.

You can capitalize on this traffic — and increase conversions — by prominently featuring the activity on your website with a book button and call to action (CTA) like “Save My Seat,” “Reserve My Spot,” or the timeless “Book Now.” This way, when people’s eyes land on your best-selling activity, their next step is clear and simple — click the book button! For more details on book button and CTA best practices, see our guide to CTAs.

Gain more direct bookings

When you feature your best-selling activity on your website, you take control of how you market and sell your services. Having a homepage that’s well designed and leads guests to your best-selling activity increases bookings made directly on your website, making you less dependent on third-party resellers.

If a customer sees your tour listed on TripAdvisor or another partner or reseller as one of the best tours in the area, they’ll likely be prompted to book through the third party rather than booking on your website, especially if they click to your homepage and don’t find the tour. People prefer to take as little steps as possible when making an online booking. Help your customers get from point A (searching for an activity) to point B (completing a booking) as quickly and simply as possible. If you don’t do so you could miss out on direct bookings and revenue.

Boost SEO

Google bots continuously crawl websites and “read” the content on web pages to determine what to return for search results. When you feature a specific tour or activity prominently on your homepage, with additional information on the tour and a great photo, you are not only communicating with your customers but also with Google. Remember: Google and other SERPs are only as smart as the information they can gather. Help your company website rank organically by clearly displaying important information.

How to feature your best-selling activity on your website

Give it prominence on your homepage

The clearest place to advertise your best-selling tour or activity is the homepage of your site. Placing your most popular tour or activity front and center is the best way to get clicks to the booking page, especially since 86% of people want to see information about a company’s products/services on their homepage (KoMarketing).

Introduce your best-selling activity with a few lines of clear, concise copy that is easy to quickly scan but also provides value. Tell readers in one line what you do and follow that up with how you do it. They can get the full tour itinerary when they click onto the page; this content is just a teaser.

Make your tour copy and book button stand out by giving them room to breathe with negative space or white space. You can also enhance the visibility of this homepage element with bright colors that contrast from the background of the site.

Pro tip: Place your most popular tour or activity higher up on the homepage, above any About Us content or information on other tours you may offer. Don’t bury it below customer reviews or photo slideshows.

According to KoMarketing, 47% of website visitors look at a company’s products/services before visiting other pages on the site, so be sure to give them a clear path to your most popular tour.

Label it “most popular”

When people land on your website and see your featured activity, they want to know that other people have enjoyed it in the past. By giving the tour a label like “Most Popular,” you signal to potential customers that this tour is booked often, so they should book it too. In fact, a label like “Most Popular” creates a sense of urgency, since the most popular tour likely sells out quickly — customers will want to book as soon as possible to secure their spot.

Pro tip: Make your label bold and bright so that it catches people’s eyes and prompts them to click.

 

Feature it in the menu

Another place to highlight your best-selling tour is in your tours or activities menu. If visitors to your site jump right to the menu instead of scrolling down your homepage, direct them to your most popular activity by listing it as the first option under tours or activities. This way, customers still don’t have to scroll or click very far to find it.

This is especially important for those users who don’t click to the activity from the homepage. According to KoMarketing, once visitors reach your site, 50% of them rely on the menu to orient themselves, making placement in the menu even more essential.

Now what?

Now that you know the importance of featuring your best-selling activity on your website, go to your website and see how prominent that activity currently is. Think about adding a “most popular” label or moving the activity to the top of your menu. For more design best practices, see our other website guides.