Be honest…
Are you happy with how many bookings you’re getting from your party rental website?
Do you know if your website is working for you or against you?
Maybe you already know your website isn’t cutting it, but you don’t know how to fix it.
Maybe you’re bringing in some decent traffic to your website, but you’re not sure why you’re not getting more bookings.
You could have a great social media presence, but at the end of the day, if your website sucks…
Good luck getting any customers.
So, what do you do? What does an effective, high-converting website look like?
Below, we’ll dive deep into what makes a great, high-converting party rental website, including:
- What are conversions and why are they so important?
- 3 Types of customers you NEED to be aware of (and why– and how– you should be treating each differently)
- + 3 Additional ways to improve your website’s conversion rate and get more bookings
And the best part about all this?
Using what I’m going to talk about, you can bring in more customers with the same traffic, without spending any money or cutting your prices.
Let’s start from the top and break down what a conversion is and why they’re so important.
Why are conversions so important?
First, what is a conversion– and why are they so important?
A conversion refers to the process of changing a visitor– in this case, on your website– into a lead or customer.
That can be done in a few ways, but typically that’s by getting them to:
- Fill in a form to request a quote
- Input their information to get a special offer
- Or go the whole nine yards and book a rental
Typically, conversion rate– the number of your visitors you’re converting into leads or customers– is measured by a percentage.
For example:
Let’s say you get 3,000 visitors per month to your website.
If you convert 30 of those visitors into bookings, that’s a 1% conversion rate because you converted 1% of your visitors into customers.
If that 1% sounds small, it is. But believe it or not, most party rental businesses have somewhere around a 1% conversion rate– or lower.
In fact, that might be your conversion rate.
Speaking of…
What is your conversion rate? (Or: How many of your visitors actually become customers?)
Chances are, if you’ve never tracked conversions on your website, your conversion rate probably isn’t great.
The good news is if you know what you’re doing it’s not too difficult to increase your conversion rates and bring in more customers with the same amount of traffic you’re already getting.
Let’s go back to our previous example for a sec:
Imagine instead of converting 1% of those 3,000 monthly visitors, you converted just one extra percent. So, a 2% conversion rate.
You’d go from getting 30 bookings per month from your website alone to 60 monthly bookings. From a single percent increase in conversions.
So then, naturally, the question is: how do you improve your website’s conversion rate to get more bookings?
The first thing is to understand that not every visitor that arrives at your website should be treated the same.
3 Types of customers you NEED to know about (and why understanding them is key to getting more bookings)
Before I talk about specific strategies for improving your website’s conversion rate, you need to understand something:
Not every one of your visitors is the same.
Think of it like a cold -> to hot spectrum with a hot prospect or future customer being closest to booking, while a cold prospect needs the most convincing.
By that, I mean…
- One person that visits your website might be thinking about maybe wanting a bounce house for their kid’s birthday party… (Cold)
- Another knows they want a bounce house, but isn’t sure you’re who they should rent it from and have questions (Warm)
- While another might already be set about exactly the kind of bounce house they’re looking for, and they’re ready to pull out their wallet and pay. (Hot)
The issue?
Designing your website in a way that treats each of these three types of customers the same doesn’t take into consideration these different “phases” along the customer journey.
Because each phase is different, each type of customer requires a different:
- Message
- Call to action
- Trust signals (you’re asking complete strangers to take out their pocketbook, after all)
- And specific tactics to convert that visitor into a customer
The goal is to move that future customer from being cold -> to warm -> to hot to convert them into a customer.
To help you do that, let’s break down each type of customer for a sec so you understand how to sell to each one:
1. Cold customer
Cold prospects are:
- Visiting your website for the first time
- And haven’t decided if they want to book yet or not
How do you approach them? As they say, first impressions are everything, and that is the key here.
That visitor will be looking for reasons to dislike and distrust your website immediately, so you need to give them every reason to love using your site and trust your company.
That can include:
- Fast load speed
- Easy navigation
- Quick and easy answers to their questions
- And a free offer that hooks them and allows you to collect their information
Anything that you can do which will make their time on your website a seamless, easy experience will help here.
Action step: How to convert cold prospects into customers
Visitors at this stage aren’t sure if they want to rent a bounce house yet, so if your website comes off too strong you’ll likely push them away.
For example, if the only option you give them is an “Add to Cart” or “Book Now” button they’ll just leave if they’re not convinced.
But if you offer a special on their rental in exchange for their information via a form, that might be just what they need to convince themselves to go with you.
That’s because it taps into natural feelings of reciprocity that all humans experience when receiving something.
By receiving something from you, they instantly feel a stronger connection, warming that lead up to you and making them far more likely to go with you vs. someone else whenever they do eventually book.
2. Warm customer
Warm prospects are:
- Potentially familiar with your business
- Usually know what they want
- But they have questions (or doubts)
Some examples of questions they might have include:
- Will it fit in my backyard?
- What is the total cost / do you charge a delivery fee?
- Do you clean your bounce houses?
The important thing to understand here is that putting a Q&A somewhere on your website, while helpful, isn’t enough.
Users know they can easily hit the “back” button if they don’t immediately find what they want, and most users are too impatient to search around for answers to their questions.
So, you need to be more active in getting their information and reaching out.
Action step: How to convert warm prospects into customers
Remember the strategy for cold prospects? Fortunately, we can use the same strategy here but take it one step further.
By collecting their information through a form using a free offer– such as “X% off your rental”– you can reach out via text or call while they’re shopping to help answer their questions and close the sale. You can use a solution like Event Hawk to automate this part of the process.
Alternatively, you can also offer things like a “Call Us” button and SMS chat plugin on your website so they can contact you directly to get more information in a way that jumps out to them more than text on a screen.
3. Hot customer
Hot prospects are:
- Familiar with your business in some way
- Often returning customers, or they know a friend or family member that has used you
- They want the simplest path to booking possible, without any obstructions
They are ready to book now and want a simple and easy buying experience.
Action step: How to convert hot prospects into customers
Despite hot prospects being ready to book now, you still need to reassure them that they can count on you.
To accomplish this, here are a few things you can do:
- Collect a deposit: There’s no better way to nail down the sale and let them know they can count on you– and don’t cancel for someone else at the last minute.
- Close them where they’re at: Make sure you have a simple and easy-to-use online checkout process. But if you’re speaking to them over the phone, don’t direct them back to your website to check out. Instead, collect a credit card over the phone right then and there and send an invoice.
- Send a confirmation email/text upon booking
3 Additional ways to get more bookings on your party rental website
When you start thinking about your visitors as being in one of several different “buckets”, it becomes easier to understand how to approach each…
… and why it’s so important to treat them all differently.
The same strategy isn’t necessarily going to work on both a cold and warm prospect, or even a warm and hot one.
So far, we’ve talked about steps you can take to improve your party rental website’s conversion rate and book more rentals using strategies specifically tailored to each type of customer.
But there’s more you can do, and some strategies are effective for multiple different customer types.
Here are a few more things you can do to improve the number of bookings you’re getting from your website:
1. Offer something free to get a visitor’s information
I touched on this earlier, but it’s so important that it’s worth mentioning again.
The strategy of offering something free in exchange for information has been used across virtually every industry since the early days of the internet and is still used today.
Why? Because it works.
And it works most effectively at warming up cold prospects, making it one of the most essential marketing tools in your tool belt.
Here are a few examples of free offers:
- X$ off their rental
- X$ bonus if they do an add-on
- X% off if they book a second day
2. Include trust signals throughout your site
Trust signals are anything on your site that makes you appear more trustworthy in the eyes of fresh visitors.
That generally comes in two forms:
- Testimonials, and
- “As seen on”s
Testimonials are great because they’re a literal testament to your service and business.
Even simple testimonials can add a ton of credibility to your business in the eyes of visitors.
For example:
Boom. If a visitor sees that as soon as they land on your website, they’ll instantly trust you far more than the average party rental website in your area.
Less powerful but still super useful are associated brand logos and “as seen on”s:
Listing logos of brands you’re affiliated with or publications you’ve been featured on adds instant credibility and trust with any visitor that lands on your site, similar to how testimonials work.
These might seem like small additions, but they make a big difference in convincing cold and warm prospects especially to trust and pick you.
3. Keep your forms short
You’ve got the traffic, offered a sweet deal in exchange for their information, and then you present them with a form asking for their:
- First name
- Last name
- Email address
- Physical address (Line 1)
- Physical address (Line 2)
- Phone number
- Q: What type of rental are you looking for?
Oh boy.
That form will scare your visitors away faster than you can blink.
Instead, try something like this:
This form asks for just 3 critical pieces of information:
- Their name
- Their email
- And their phone number. Or, in other words: how to contact them
With that, you have all the information that is essential to closing the sale outside of a credit card, without overwhelming your soon-to-be customer.
Supercharge your business and get more bookings with Event Hawk…
Getting more bookings from your party rental website is possible, you just need to understand:
- The 3 types of customers
- And what each of them needs to be convinced to buy from you
There’s more than just one type of customer, so the better you structure your website and your process in a way that speaks to each of these three customer types the better.
It can take work to find the right balance of marketing tactics, but with testing and patience, you can increase your website’s conversion rates by a substantial margin.
Rather have help?
Event Hawk can supercharge your party rental marketing by automating nearly the entire process, including:
- Automated text message marketing to amp up your conversions
- Automated review requests after their rental to boost your reviews
- And one convenient place to manage all your business communications including texts, calls, emails, and social messaging
Plus, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee.
