A new look and feel for Welcome Online

Now in its 9th year, the Welcome Online booking system continues to provide real-time, profitable bookings for hundreds of hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs throughout the UK. With its 10th birthday but a year away, we have treated it to an important makeover.

We don’t want to fill this post with technical terms, but it is certainly worth mentioning that the entire online booking process has been converted to HTML5 which is fast becoming an industry-standard way of structuring and presenting websites. It also means it will be usable on a wide range of devices from desktop PCs to smartphones.

This has resulted in a subtle but noticeable difference in design, which we can see if we place the old next to the new:

Old Welcome Online:

New Welcome Online:

As you can see, the new version sports a more streamlined look and feel with fixed-width columns and a much larger Check Availability section, to help draw the customer in to that all important button. Edges have been rounded off and fonts improved, making the page easier on the eye and offering a more unified feel. The guest will know exactly what they need to do, as soon as they reach the page.

The new colour-coded availability calendar remains, but has been tweaked slightly to ensure your potential guests can see the wider picture, at a glance.

Further improvements have been made to the availability page:

Old availability page:

New availability page:

As you'll note from the screenshots above, the new layout has enabled us to shorten the page length, which means less scrolling for the user.

We’ve made a few other enhancements, too:

• Sold out room types are now automatically listed below available room types, meaning the guest no longer has to scroll down the page looking for availability (you can see an example of this in the screenshot above)

• It is now possible to send automated HTML confirmation emails to guests (this means you can send more attractive emails containing pictures and other elements) – please call us for further details

• Customisation of multiple page elements, allowing seamless integration with the existing hotel website

• The Discount Codes feature has been given an overhaul. You can now specify a number of conditions under which the discount applies, including date of arrival, date of booking, length of stay and more (more)

• A new ‘inline’ version of Welcome Online is available for hotels wishing for even tighter integration with their existing website and appears as a pop-up window on the hotel website – contact us for further details

• Don’t forget - Welcome Online is now available for Facebook! (more)

The new version of Welcome Online is being rolled out this week. If you’re an existing user, please keep an eye out for it on your website and let us know what you think - your feedback is important.

If you don’t have Welcome Online, but want to know how we can make your website work harder for you, contact us today.