Travel Websites… Should they be showing weather widgets?
Calling all owners of travel websites: Are you making the most of your online presence? Yes? Well we presume then that you have a robust weather widget on your site to help improve user experience? No? Well, then you’re seriously missing out, and here we take an in-depth look at why.
The most recent research backing up the importance of weather widgets
Recently a study has built further upon the argument that travellers need to know about weather and climate data before forging ahead with a booking. This research, which has found that a staggering 73% of tourists had checked into a destination’s weather patterns prior to booking, means that there are more travellers than even previously thought to be particularly weather-minded.
So if your travel website isn’t displaying a super sparkly and always reliable weather widget, then you’re putting off as many as three quarters of your visitors. And if you have a website that is hoping to catch a booking then the 73% of travellers who consider weather as the most important factor could well be heading off over to any number of other websites where the weather is integrated (Land Environment and People 2010).
Don’t miss out on an added opportunity to re-engage
As well as serving up essential information to allow for travellers making informed decisions about their holiday destination of choice, a weather widget also offers up an ideal opportunity for re-engagement after the traveller has booked. To back this idea up is an official study that found as many as 45% of holiday goers will take a daily online trip to check how the weather is shaping up in the run up to their holiday.
And when these further visits are coupled with a savvy online strategy that could include post-booking but pre-departure offers (such as accommodation booking, currency exchange services, insurance services, activity booking and car hire) there could be a whole host of other revenue streams for the otherwise singularly focused travel website.
Weather widgets are just one way in which the robust data that APIXU streams can be harnessed and, given that the weather is inherently linked to many areas of everyday life, the travel industry equally makes for one relatively small piece of the APIXU weather API pie.
So whether you need weather data for building the next lifesaving extreme weather tracking app, or are crafting the next forecasting app for the everyday Joe, we’re here for you with a feature rich weather API.
