With progress in web technologies, internet speeds and capable web and mobile devices, users have a tendency to prefer online tools for the majority of their study. This is notably true for travelers who mainly prefer online travel portal sites to look for destinations and plan their own itineraries including flights and resorts.
This change in preference towards internet resources has caused a rapid growth in travel portal development. Vendors -- no matter their company size are getting their online business presence shrouded from the shape of web-based travel portals and solutions to enhance customer engagement.
Being professional web programmers from past 12 years and having delivered several internet travel portals and sites, we plan to share the top 6 characteristics that in our view are absolutely crucial for a prosperous travel site and our expertise implementing them.
A robust content management system (CMS)
Typically, travel sites do tend to bring data from 3rd party API's that offers global data about resorts, buses, trains, buses etc. However, it boils down to the content management system that'll be handling all that information and the way it is shown on the front end.
While the API feeds may offer massive chunks of data about tours with different attributes, a web programmer can use that data and section it programmatically to show certain data in certain areas of the website to enhance the user experience.
In such usage cases, CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla may be really useful. If funding allows, then business owners are able to also put money into custom back-end development using frameworks like YII and NodeJS may additionally yield tailor-made and extremely robust results.
Informational Product Detail Page
A travel portal works much like an E-commerce website. In both companies, it is the item detail page by which a customer eventually make a determination. For clients who have reached this point of the sales funnel, it's important data to exhibit all the crucial particulars of the services in a clear and succinct way.
Advanced Search
A travel portal is incomplete without a powerful search mechanism. The Search functionality is easily the most used component in a journey portal site because it allows the user to find important recommendations without spending plenty of time searching the site.
For it to succeed, it ought to have choices for consumers to select their destination date for trip commencement, duration of the trip, and other similar details depending upon the business model.
Supportive Search Filters
Next in line are Search filters. These are just another critical tool for customers who are browsing a particular category on your website. As there can be numerous effects under each class, thus it is vital to offer a means for the customers to filter them according to meaningful criteria to be able to see relevant results.
CMS like WordPress offers numerous plugins that could be employed to set up this and in our situation, we employed an off the shelf plugin and customized it works perfectly with the information feed being pulled in the API.
Lazy Load for Search Results
Even though Search filters do a wonderful job of enabling consumers to filter large amounts of information according to their demands, there might still be cases where filtered outcomes are a great deal. A database this thick is going to most likely end up affecting the page load rate and will make the User Experience slow.
User-Friendly Contact Us Form
Finally, a travel portal site should always feature a readily reachable contact our shape. Sometimes, it is even recommended to have Live chat on the portal to give real-time support. If that isn't possible, then a successful contact us kind is essential.
Conclusion
When there are various other features that may be used to create a complete travel portal, we have touched the bare minimum and completely essential characteristics which are a must for a travel portal site to be successful.
Are you looking to create a travel portal? Contact us now and receive unmatched consulting out of our internet development specialists to set up a phenomenal online presence.