There’s a significant pattern disruption occurring in the Vacation Rental Website Builder world, and I’m going to share with you why I not only agree with it but embrace it. I am transforming my vacation rental website design for The Grainary and those for all of my clients. You should, too.
What is this all about?  I'm talking about websites with 80% of their site information on the home page. This makes the website built for “mobile-first” Mobile-first websites aren’t new. In fact, they have been around for a while.
There’s a big reason why they are becoming more popular at the minute, and it’s all to do with that little device in your hand that you can't put down. Â
Your mobile phone is driving the Vacation Rental Website Builder
This shift is happening at the same time as the stats show that more people are booking on a mobile phone.
Even my clients' Google Analytics shows a clear trend: mobile phone visitors are dominating bookings.
That being the case, it is no wonder that one-page websites are getting more popular, particularly in the hospitality industry. Â
The importance of a mobile-friendly Vacation Rental Website Builder
Having a vertical website layout for your Vacation Rental Website Builder makes it easier to tell a story. With a one-page vertical web design — if you structure it well — you can control the order in which users consume information.
Left to themselves, guests tend to jump from one web page to another, potentially missing out on content that is crucial in the conversion process. You can direct website visitors along that conversion path by utilising a single page. A great example of this is The Laurels B&B in the UK.
Now, let's move on to those ten tips for prioritising your vacation rental website for mobile.
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1. Prioritize Responsive Vacation Rental Web Design
Ensure your website is responsive and adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes.
2. Optimize Page Load Speed
Compress images, minimize code, and leverage caching to improve the loading times of your vacation rental site for mobile.
3. Use Clear and Concise Navigation
Make it easy for mobile users to find information on your vacation rental website by using a simple and intuitive navigation menu.
4. Implement Click-to-Call and Click-to-Email
Enable users to contact you directly with a single tap on their mobile devices.
5. Design with Thumb-Friendly Interactions
Place important buttons and links within easy reach of a user's thumb to enhance usability.
6. Optimize Forms for Mobile
Streamline your booking or inquiry forms, keeping them short, user-friendly, and easy to complete on a mobile device.
7. Highlight Key Information
Ensure important details like rates, availability, and property features are prominently displayed on mobile screens.
8. Utilize Large Fonts and Clear Text
Use legible fonts and increase the font size to improve the readability of your vacation rental website builder on smaller screens.
9. Optimize Images for Mobile
Compress images without sacrificing quality to reduce mobile device loading times and data usage.
10. Test Cross-Device Compatibility
Regularly test your website across different devices and screen sizes to ensure consistent performance and display.
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A strong Vacation Rental Website Builder delivered quickly
 The design and development of websites that have 80% of the information on the home page are inevitably much quicker and cheaper than for multiple-page sites. Still, it also gives the designers a chance to make sure that the design of that page is on-point.
They can focus on delivering a consistent and immersive user experience, helping to boost engagement and get people onto your booking engine quicker. Â
A Vacation Rental Website should be ideal for mobile devices
The push towards responsive design has eased the difficulties of navigating websites on a mobile device significantly. However, it can still be less than ideal on a smartphone with a small screen.
By contrast, single-page sites are much easier to optimise for mobile. They are also much easier to navigate, with users only having to scroll to find the information they need.
Integrate the engagement of your Vacation Rental Website Builder
The attention span and patience of internet users have never been shorter.
We don’t want to have to trawl through complex websites to find the information or products we need.
In fact, the average web user will stay on a web page for just 15 seconds, so the sooner you can get your message across, the better. One of the biggest reasons that users are leaving your website is slow page load speeds. If you have more than four pages on your website, combined with slow-loading pages, then you are just asking for someone to leave your website before they book.
And we all know… Â Once they leave your vacation rental website, they are not coming back. Â
You Control the Flow of Information
 Websites require visitors to browse through the information linearly as opposed to clicking and exploring the page to page. One of the perks of maintaining a one-page vacation rental website is to direct visitors through the information on your site in a predetermined order.
As a Vacation Rental Website Builder, Parallax is perfect for websites that want to provide specific information before the visitor moves on to something else. Â You can back up this good web design with easy-to-follow icons.
As I said above, people have a short attention span. As a generation, we don’t read blocks of text. We skim-read at best. (Yes, even this blog!). Getting people to your website’s getting harder and harder now, so why are we giving our potential bookers an excuse to leave? Loads of text and pages to flip through will only drive your customers away. Â
Not just for a Vacation Rental Website Builder for mobile
 A big misconception about one-page websites is that they are just for mobile. Not so! Check out the latest creation for Newlands Hall in Durham. Its image-first design makes it as easy to navigate on a desktop as on a mobile.
If you are a member of my private training website, then you will know exactly how a site for the hospitality industry should look. Â
What about the Booking engine?
If you work with Eviivo, Free To Book, Super control, Bookalet, or another property management system, you know that your booking engine cannot be all on one page. However, the careful placement of a “book now” button, followed by several CTA (Click To Action) buttons, on the website will ensure that the guest will follow a direct route to the booking engine. Â
Does incorporating a one-page design into your Vacation Rental Website Builder kill your SEO?
 Websites designed this way do not kill your SEO. If anything, there's an argument that getting a visitor to stay on your website for longer (aka sticky) will increase the trust factor that Google looks for. Â
 My Takeaway
I’m a massive fan of websites that have 80% of the whole site information on the first page of your direct booking vacation rental website. As I said right at the start, I believe these are the future for all hospitality businesses.
Not only have I changed my own website, grainary.co.uk, but I have also worked with short-stay accommodation owners all over the world to adopt this method to their businesses, too, with amazing results.
They look good and achieve what we all want: They get the guest to the booking engine as soon as possible. This is how to get that direct booking on your Vacation Rental Website.
Watch, Listen and Learn about the Need for a Mobile First Website
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00:00 Start 00:20 Mobile-first web design 02:20 What you can do
Transcript from the Episode
I recently spoke about the importance of having Google Analytics on your website. Why is it important?
Because it gives you all the indicators of how people are interacting with your website right now, one of the key indicators that you need to look at is the ratio of people that go onto your website on a desktop or a laptop computer to the ones that are going on a phone.
Mobile-first web design
We've noticed over the last five years that they used to tip very heavily on laptops and computers. But now, over time, it started to be this, your website has to be built mobile-first, which is why every Boostly website is always built mobile-first; what does that mean is that they are designed with these things in mind.
Because we know that most of your future potential guests will be accessing your website via mobile phone first. Â
Now, even though many stays are completed and are actually booked on their laptop, most of the searches have started on one of the phones. So if you dig behind the stats, what does that mean, if you look at the reasons behind it, well, somebody may be at work, or maybe in transport, or maybe in a bar or cafe or whatever, and they are looking for a place to stay.
And again, if we're coming onto your website, it will be a recommendation, stay with you in the past, or maybe find you through some clever social media or paid ads. They come across your site, and they come out on the phone. Â
Now normally, they may have to check with a partner, work x y Zed, so what they'll do is they'll send a link to a partner via WhatsApp or email it to wherever, and then what they'll do is look it together on a laptop or a computer. But the first impression is everything.
And if the first impression is wrong, like I've said before, 89% of people said they have a bad user experience, they bounce, they leave and they never come back. Â
Now I'm in Spain, and 100% of Spanish websites are crap. Because they don't invest the time, technology, and money into making sure that the user experience is good on a mobile phone, they are very behind the times on that. Â
What you can do
So what I would love for you to do right now, wherever you are, load up your website on your phone and run a dummy booking through your website to see how easy or how hard is and if you can't be unbiased because you know your website inside out. Â And there's a really good website called user testing.com.
You can find total strangers who will give you honest feedback on your website and how easy it is to book or how difficult it is to book. Â It is a website that I use a lot, and I encourage you to do so as well.
So the main theme of this daily podcast, and we're coming up to number 400 of these daily podcasts, is to make sure that your website is mobile-first.
Like I said Boostly websites are all built mobile-first because we know the power of it. If you want to get a brand new website, I have a chat with us, then just come to boostly.co.uk/websites and check it out.
Come and check out the portfolio that we do. Go and check out the prices, the FAQs etc., and then from there, you can book a little call Via calendly and you'll speak to me, Tom, a member of the team, and we'll see if we can help you and if you're going to be a good fit for us.
