How to sell safaris on your website: Three key website tips for safari tour operators

If you read the first part of this series, your website should (hopefully) be decked out with not only beautiful, but more importantly, relatable pictures of your safaris. And while photos definitely play a huge factor when it comes to piquing the interest of every safari enthusiast that lands on your page, it’s your tour descriptions that will actively sell them on your safaris. So, you need to make sure that your descriptions will help you do exactly that.
Here’s how:

#1 Make your website scannable and comprehensive
 

Some of your potential customers might want to quickly breeze over the reviews, on the lookout for only the most important information. And then there are scanners -- the ones that painstakingly read every single word of your description, hoping to find answers to all of the questions running through their heads.

You need to make sure that you make it easy for both kinds of visitors by writing a clean and structured description, highlighting the most important facts with bullet points and breaking up lengthy paragraphs with pictures. Walia Adventures, a tour operator based in Ethiopia, has done exactly that:

#2 Make booking buttons immediately obvious

At this point, your website visitors are thinking long and hard about whether they actually want to pull the trigger and book a safari with you. And chances are, they actually might – but only if it’s easy for them to actually do so. So how do you do that? Well, make the ‘Book Now’ button blatantly, obnoxiously obvious. As a general guideline, when designing your booking button, make sure that it is large and contrasts from the rest of your page. Try doing something like this:

Insider tip: This is actually less of an insider tip and more of a desperate plea: make sure that you have integrated your booking button with a booking software system. This will allow the visitor to easily book the tour and it will manage your bookings for you. Best part? Many booking software companies only charge a percentage of booked tickets – that means, they aren’t making money if you aren’t.

#3 Back up your site reviews with testimonials

People want to know that other travellers have been on your safaris – and have had a good time on your safaris. So you need to show them that people have indeed had a glorious time on your safari by including testimonials. And a word for the wise, please don't include a generic “I had such a wonderful time.” as a testimonial. Make the testimonials come alive with real names and pictures of the reviewers.

Stay tuned!

It takes a bit of elbow grease to get your website in tip top shape to sell more tours! But if you are following these tips, you are ahead of probably 90% of safari tour operators out there. And, if you want to turn your website into even more of a selling machine, stay tuned for the last part of this series!