Do You WWW Your Tourism Website Address?
The domain name for a tourism business website is your premium address on the Internet. ?It tells potential customers how to reach you on the Web to research trip opportunities and book travel. ?Every reputable tourism business must promote their website URL both online and offline in such places as tourism office brochures, tourism industry sites, travel experience review websites, and in print and online advertisements.
As there are many ways for visitors to find out about your travel business, there are also many ways for people to reach your website. A hyperlink that appears on a search engine results page in Google or Bing or a link from a travel booking or review website is one way. The other typical way is when someone researching trip ideas opens their web browser, types your URL into the address box and hits Go. Will they reach your travel company home page or will they receive an unpleasant ?Not Found? error message?
Even though website URLs almost always start with the ubiquitous ?www.? (read out loud as w w w dot), many businesses simplify matters and skip the ?www? part. This brands your domain name (the part without the ?www?) with your tourism business and is less awkward sounding than stating the obvious. How many times have you heard the phrase ?www.? spoken before a website URL? Are you like me and get a bit impatient as you wait for the actual domain name to be said as that is the only important part?
Regardless of whether you include the ?www.? in your tourism promotional material (e.g. an online banner ad or an ad that airs on the radio), many people will input (type) your domain name without it. First, they may think it is not required as is the case with most, but not all websites. Second, customers trying to reach your tourism website on a mobile device may skip the ?www. ? merely to save time and effort by typing fewer characters.
Tourism Website Not Found Without the WWW
I still discover the occasional travel website or two where typing the naked domain (without the ?www.?) will lead to a jarring PAGE NOT FOUND message, as the screenshots below demonstrate. Whether you are using for example?www.MyTravelCompany123.com (or more accurately http://www.MyTravelCompany123.com) or simplifying it as just ?MyTravelCompany123.com?, your web server must handle both seamlessly.
Tech-savvy visitors will realize the problem and try again with the ?www.? included. Other visitors may make the wrong assumption that your website is temporarily down or even worse that your tourism business has closed down permanently. ?Don?t let this happen to your travel business.
BookingCounts Rule: Make sure your travel website successfully loads whether your potential customer types the ?www? part of your URL or leaves it out, especially for your home page.
Many smart travel company owners are not even aware of this problem. They are used to typing the full URL to their website and probably have it bookmarked in their browser for convenience. BookingCounts is here to remind you to test your website regularly.
Install and try to access your website with the most popular web browsers and by both typing the URL and clicking hyperlinks listed on external websites. You do not want to give potential customers (people actively planning a trip online) a valid reason to look and book elsewhere. Running a reputable travel company means you also run a reputable travel website, and making a few simple configuration adjustments is all that it takes to get more visitors and get more bookings.
Domain Name Mapping ? WWW and Non-WWW
There are many ways to configure your web server to respond to a request for a page starting with ?www.? and also handle users who forget to or simply decide to leave out the domain prefix (the so called ?naked? domain). In IT speak, the prefix is called a subdomain and by convention the ?www? subdomain is the default location to host websites on a server as opposed to other Internet functions like FTP.
Another smart practice is to handle the two most common website subdomain (prefix or alias) URL typos ? ?ww.? and ?wwww.? (e.g. ww.MyTravelCompany123.com and wwww.MyTravelCompany123.com). It may look strange to have two or four w?s before the domain, but many people are in a hurry and miss a letter or enter one too many. ?The few extra minutes of travel website configuration work to handle these odd cases will pay off.
I will not go into the technical aspects here since while the concept is the same, step by step instructions to configure DNS mapping and redirection varies greatly. ?The set up may happen on your own server, at your web hosting company, with your domain name registrar, or a combination of server locations. You might be configuring CNAME records, add a URL forwarding or redirect entry, or simply check the right set of options in your hosting control panel.
A couple of website URL mapping articles are listed below as a starting point to understand how all the pieces fit together:
Basic Guide to DNS (Google Apps)
Working with CNAME Records: DNS Made Easy Tutorials (Video)
Add A Domain Alias (HostMySite.com ? Shared Hosting)
How to I setup URL forwarding for a domain (Namecheap ? Domain Registration)
How Google and Bing (and your browser) Might Do You A Favor
Browser and search engines have gotten incredibly smart since their introduction and in many cases can guess the name of the website you are trying to reach before you finish typing. So you will be happy to learn that the ?www? issue we are talking about today is partially handled for you. When a user leaves out the ?www.? and the browser is unable to locate your site on the Web, a suggestion may appear to try again with the www subdomain. After reading the error message the user can click the hyperlink to the full website URL (including the ?www.?) and reach your travel website after all.
You may think this smart search feature is awesome (and it is), however it actually points out a flaw with your website for all the world to see. Visitors will know that you have not done the obvious and configured commonplace redirection and DNS mapping for your travel website. Travel planners are looking for reputable companies to do business with. When they see that Google?s Chrome web browser can detect a simple but fixable problem that your business has still not corrected, your reputation is damaged even before they reach your home page.
Plus the person searching for travel providers may not be using a browser or search engine that handles this problem smoothly. ?Mobile devices are more limited in their browser capabilities. ?In addition, some novice users may assume that when a website is not found they should be concerned and move on to book travel elsewhere. ?These are the reasons why helping travelers to reach your website without the www (and other common typos and misspellings) is so critical to your tourism website reputation and success.
Bonus Tip
Registering domains that are common misspellings of your primary domain is another way to be proactive and make it possible for visitors to find your tourism business online and on the first try. Forwarding or redirecting those misspelled URLs to your correctly spelled website domain name is a smart way to get more visitors to your site.
Summary
The first way to get more bookings (see Tourism Website Optimization Hierarchy of Needs) is to do everything you can to prove your travel business is reputable. Making sure that your domain registration and hosted web server are properly configured to handle both ?www.? and non-?www.? URLs without fail is a critical step.
By following these guidelines you will ensure that people planning a trip online will at least reach your home page (the rest is up to you, with the help of BookingCounts of course). If they can?t even navigate to your site, you have failed the first test.
Remember that Reputation comes first and many travellers may not give you a second chance to wow them with your unique and trustworthy travel services.?Looking unprofessional online affects your reputation offline, so follow the BookingCounts advice to deliver more visitors to your website instantly and give them every opportunity to make a booking.
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