Hersha Hospitality Trust (NYSE: HT) is a self-advised real estate investment trust in the hospitality sector, which owns and operates luxury and lifestyle hotels in coastal gateway and resort markets. The Company’s 30 hotels totaling 4,544 rooms are located in New York, Washington, DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, and select markets on the West Coast.
Project Overview
Hersha came to Cendyn to transform their web presence and increase conversions while showcasing the unique look, experience, and brand voice for each individual property in their collection. To accomplish this, we had to create a variety of websites that made sense as a collection while also highlighting the independent spirit of each property and destination.
Working together with the Hersha team, we organized deep-dive discovery sessions for each new property. The scope of the project required an efficient, organized, and flexible approach to every property site.
In the end, Cendyn’s designs paid off in spades as we boosted Hersha’s website conversion rate to 36.5%.
One size does not fit all
Another challenge the new websites had to overcome was wide variations with Hersha’s website bounce rates. Typically, bounce rates are high when a user isn’t seeing the information they expected or wanted on that particular page.
To solve for this, our UX team performed audits on each property in the collection to determine where the user experience was falling flat. We then took those observations and applied new design methodologies to the UX.
In the end, we are proud to share that with each website we redesigned, the bounce rates improved dramatically.
The Solution
In the end, Cendyn’s process and application of craft, experience, testing, and the ability to work hand-in-hand with our partners at Hersha has been an ongoing success. We take great pride in the work we do and we love helping our customers succeed.
-
All the improvements won’t count for anything if it didn’t drive an increase in booking revenue.
-
The new website saw a dramatic decrease in bounce rate, dropping from 45% to 20%, which is testament to the improved content strategy and intuitiveness.
-
Driving up the conversion rate was a key goal in Hersha’s web strategies, which we helped achieve.
