When couples are on the hunt for their dream wedding, they are full of excitement and are ready to be wowed when they land on your site. Today’s engaged couple typically starts a search online for the perfect wedding venue but are often met with outdated and drab websites that are a poor representation of the real beauty of the venue. Wedding and event venue owners must understand the conversion and monetary power of a beautiful, diverse and exceptionally executed website. White Stone Marketing, a leading wedding and lodging design agency, has curated a list of top website design considerations for event venue websites. When properly implemented, these tips will help you outshine and outperform your competition.
Below are two shining examples of wedding venue website designs that help these businesses stand out in the crowd. Contact us if you would like a quote for a new wedding venue website design.
Hermann Hill Wedding Venue Website Tour
Take a tour of the website White Stone Marketing created for the Hermann Hill Venue in Hermann, MO and receive an arsenal of tips you should incorporate with your own wedding venue website.
BlissWood Wedding Venue Website Tour
Take a tour of another White Stone Marketing wedding website design, BlissWood Weddings in Cat Spring, TX, and see how they took what was almost an afterthought on their lodging website and gave weddings the attention and visibility it deserved with its own stand-alone website and marketing platform.
Top 5 Best Practices of a Successful Wedding Venue Website
There are different strategies and tactics businesses should incorporate into a new venue website. While not all-inclusive, below are the top five tips based on the results of heat mapping studies and tracking conversions online.
1. Include Stunning Photography & Videography of Real Brides Throughout the Site
Brides, grooms and couples want to see real photos of real weddings. Couples are skimming your website for information and they will not read much text. Make sure your website is highly visual throughout with strategic professional photography and videography.
- Integrate video and a slideshow on the pages.
- Use special graphics throughout to add to the appeal.
- Use photos to tell the story instead of text when possible.
- Remember people are skimming your content.
- Each page could be the first page people see on your website, make all of them visually appealing.
2. Develop Unique Packages & Allow Customization
All too often, wedding venues provide couples with every single detail on their website because they do not understand the sales funnel journey couples take before making a decision. Overwhelming detail is often provided upfront when closing the sale should be the goal during this stage. Phase two in the sales process is where businesses should provide contractual-like specifics, all details and legality issues of the event. These details should be removed from the website and presented when the couple is further along in the sales funnel.
- Provide multiple package options.
- Integrate yield management based on season, day of the week, and most popular weekends of the year.
- Add elopement packages.
- Allow customization. Couples want their wedding to be unique and if you allow for it, it will help increase your bottom line.
- Provide a graphic PDF or online flipbook that allows packages to be examined in an attractive format that can be shared with others.
3. Add a Stunning Photo Gallery Page Featuring the Different Seasons & Wedding Locations
The photo gallery is one of the most viewed pages of a wedding venue website. These photos should contain real couples and should be refreshed and added to often in order to keep the content fresh and new. Photos should contain couples from all ethnicities and genders for inclusion. It is also important to make sure couples can see your different wedding locations on the property.
- Add a video gallery as well as a photo gallery.
- Contact photographers that have shot on your property and ask to use their photos and video.
- Give photographers credit one time on a photographers credit page.
- Keep your content fresh and updated.
- Use alt tags on all photos.
- Include photos of your customized options.
4. Keep Your Request For Proposal Simple
The more you require on an online form, the less likely couples are to fill them out. Keep your RFP short and sweet and make sure to track it properly as a conversion in Google Analytics.
- Consider offering links to your beautiful, graphics-heavy marketing materials on the thank you page for interested couples to download and share.
- Consider a digital flipbook to more beautifully showcase your packages in a user-friendly, sharable online format.
- Make sure you can track in Google Analytics if you use a third-party RFP form.
5. Strategic Integrated Marketing
A stunning wedding venue website without proper marketing will yield dismal performance. What good is your stunning website if no one can find it? Launching a strategic wedding venue marketing campaign coupled with a new website is the recipe for success. Find out more about the top wedding venue marketing tips you should consider when marketing your event venue.
- Integrate SEO.
- Track with Google Analytics.
- Launch a local marketing campaign.
- Set up paid search campaigns.
- Strategically target and re-market to engaged couples on social media.
- Consider automated email marketing when RFP’s are filled out.
- Integrate the right tools into your website to help you succeed (booking tours, digital flipbooks, texting & more).
- Create artfully crafted graphic materials to give couples.
- Blog to bring in new traffic and be seen as the authority on weddings.
- Spread your reach with strategic directory submissions.
- Monitor your online reputation and obtain more reviews.
To compete online in the wedding business, you must be unique, diverse and better than your competitors. Contact us if you would like a free Diamond Report where we will analyze your current website design and marketing and provide you with a grade and tips to make improvements.