The vacation rental market is a growing market–especially in the wake of the global pandemic. People are traveling again, and they’re increasingly choosing short-term property rentals over traditional hotels. As a property owner or manager, you likely know all about the competitive challenges inherent to the short-term rental market, and the incredible income opportunities awaiting those who put in the work.
Of course, just because it’s a lucrative market doesn’t mean the money comes easily. As with any business operating in the digital era, website design is often the difference between success and failure.
At Slam Media Lab, we’ve seen first-hand the power of an elegant, responsive, and user-friendly websites designed using Webflow–a development platform that allows users to create responsive websites without using code. As an award-winning Webflow developer with 10+ years of experience, we know the importance of time and resource conservation for protecting your bottom line.
That’s why we decided to build a vacation rental website template for property owners and managers.
Our professionally-crafted short-term rental template is the perfect tool for ensuring your vacation property remains competitive and relevant. Thanks to its customizable and scalable nature, the template is also a great resource for quickly adapting to regulatory challenges in the industry as they arise.
In the interest of transparency, we’d like to point out that depending on large booking platforms like Airbnb isn’t always a great idea. Sure, those pages drive huge amounts of traffic, but they’re also highly competitive. And don’t even get us started on all the commissions they charge! If you’re looking to launch or expand your vacation property rental business without all the third-party platforms and heavy payouts, you’ve come to the right place.
Of course, it’s also important to point out that the short-term rental market changes constantly–especially when it comes to zoning regulations and licensing. Often, properties listed exclusively on large booking platforms pay the heaviest price when a new local ordinance drops.
We recommend a stand-alone website as a way to safeguard against any potential regulatory challenges that may arise in the future. By directing current and future clients to your property’s home on the Web, you’ll be better positioned to retain clients for the long term.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the benefits and features included in our vacation rental website template. We’ll also share some of the many ways we partner with passionate entrepreneurs and small business owners to slam their digital marketing and branding goals.
Why Use a Vacation Rental Website Template
Designing a website from the ground up requires extensive planning and logistics that would make even the most competent project manager's head spin. From graphic design to site architecture and ADA-compliant accessibility, getting your short-term rental website up and running is a complex, resource-intensive job.
As a leading web design agency based in San Francisco, we understand how important it is to conserve time and money while maximizing positive outcomes. That's why we designed a vacation rental website template to streamline the process of creating, reviewing, and launching a stunning website for your rental property.
We recommend following these five steps to get your vacation rental on the internet and converting traffic into reservations:
- Select the perfect template
- Customize your content
- Optimize for SEO and user experience
- Perform a quality control analysis
- Connect your domain and go live!
Thanks to our vacation rental website template, you can easily maximize your property’s potential by creating a professional online presence for your short-term rental.
Buy Slam’s Short-Term Rental Website Template for $79 – Limited Offer
Benefits of Using a Vacation Rental Website Template
Using a short-term rental website builder offers several benefits that make creating and managing your vacation property website much more accessible and efficient. Forget HTML and CSS–these days, it's all about efficiency and a great user experience.
Here are three fantastic benefits to using a vacation rental website template:
- Easy to Use: Short-term rental website builders are designed with user-friendly interfaces, making it possible to create and update your website without advanced tech know-how.
- No Technical Skills Needed: With our template, you don't need coding or web development skills. We did the groundwork so you can focus on showcasing your properties, managing bookings, and providing excellent customer service without the technical complexities of website management.
- You’re in Control: Our short-term rental template gives you complete control over the look, feel, and content of your site. You can easily make updates, add new properties, and integrate booking and payment systems as you see fit, ensuring your website aligns perfectly with your business goals and branding.
By using our rental property website template, you'll take charge of your online identity without technical complexity slowing you down.
Vacation Rental Website Template Must-Have Features
Not all vacation rental website templates are created equal. The truth is, it all comes down to the features and how you use them. Read on to discover the must-have features we’ve included in our short-term rental website builder.
Buy Slam’s Short-Term Rental Website Template for $79 – Limited Offer
Professional Branding
When building a short-term rental website, professional branding tops the list of must-have features. According to research, customers are more likely to remember and support brands with strong visual identities. This is especially important in the tourism industry, because aesthetics play an important role in shaping perceptions of luxury vacation destinations.
The importance of brand identity goes way beyond just giving people something nice to look at–it builds credibility by showing your guests that you care enough about your business to spend time making it appealing in all respects. When prospective guests visit your website and see a beautiful, professionally designed layout, they will instinctively assume you put the same care and attention to detail into your short-term vacation rental.
At Slam, we’re known for our expertise in brand strategy and identity. We know how important it is to stay competitive with an attention-grabbing, memorable brand. We also understand the importance of having fun with your brand’s aesthetics–especially in the tourism industry! That’s why our vacation rental website template features professional branding tools created by our award-winning designers.
Cost-Effective
Building a website from scratch involves a lot of hidden costs. From figuring out hosting and server logistics, to covering the price of graphic design, web design, content creation, and SEO, the process is the literal opposite of cost-effective. For companies looking to host large databases and online stores, it makes sense to build a website from the ground up. But for short-term vacation rental property owners and managers, the costs involved are objectively prohibitive and ultimately unnecessary.
We designed our vacation rental website template to include all the features you need–and none of the ones you don’t. Our goal is to make things as simple and streamlined as possible, so you can get back to focusing on your short-term rental property.
Save Time
Running a vacation rental property is a labor-intensive endeavor. From managing bookings and client expectations to supervising property maintenance and repairs, it’s a job that undoubtedly keeps you busy. As a property owner or manager, hours spent in front of a computer building a website is the last thing you need.
Thanks to our ready-made vacation rental website template, you don’t need to waste time learning complicated tech skills or figuring out how to create a navigational menu. We’ve included everything you need to get your website up and running with just a few hours and clicks. Just find a nice spot to work, fill in your content, upload your images, and prepare for launch!
Responsive Design
Have you ever opened a promising-looking link on your phone, only to be immediately turned off by the terrible user experience? The graphics are out of place, half the text runs off the screen, and an excessive amount of squinting and pinching is required to make sense of the content. If so, then you intuitively understand the importance of responsive design.
If you want your vacation rental website to convert site visitors into paying guests, then you need to think about mobile responsiveness. According to research, a majority of Internet users in the United States spend around half their online time on mobile phones. So, your short-term rental website needs to look equally amazing on phone screens and computer screens if your goal is to attract loyal customers.
Responsive design is critical for a great user experience. As an added bonus, it improves your chances of ranking well on Google–especially when combined with Webflow SEO, a development platform that lets you create no-code websites with built-in SEO. It really is a no-brainer, which is why it’s included in our vacation rental website template.
User-Friendly Customization
Often, one of the biggest trade-offs with pre-made templates is sacrificing customization options in the name of convenience. It’s hard to find the middle ground between saving time and looking like yet another generic booking app. And if you’ve been working hard on crafting a unique brand identity, the ability to customize your vacation rental website template becomes even more important.
Thankfully, we designed our short-term rental website builder with flexibility and customization in mind. Whether it’s selecting your own color scheme, curating image galleries, or customizing layout and page design, we’ve got you covered. Better yet, you can update your website as needed!
Pre-Made Pages
Building a new website is intimidating–regardless of whether you’re using a template or starting from zero. It can be difficult to know which pages to include and how to organize them for a great user experience. That’s why pre-made pages are an essential feature of any short-term rental website builder.
There are several advantages to using pre-made pages for your vacation rental website. Here are just a few:
- Consistency
- User-friendly
- Professional look
As Webflow experts, we have the skills and knowledge to design elegant product pages and features. We covered that part of the process, so you can focus on your strengths. Forget hours spent trying to figure out how to build a menu–our vacation rental website template has everything you need to launch your site with minimal stress.
SEO Optimization
Have you ever wondered how to get your website on page 1 of Google search results? It’s basically the end-goal of every digital marketer and entrepreneur–and the key to success in a competitive digital world.
The answer is SEO–Search Engine Optimization.
As Webflow SEO experts, we spend a lot of time optimizing targeted content to ensure our clients’ websites rank as high as possible in search engines. Our clear objectives are improved searchability, enhanced visibility, and increased organic traffic. When someone searches “short-term vacation rental” for example, we want your website to show up first!
Of course, good SEO is equal parts art and science–impossible to learn on the fly. Thanks to Slam’s extensive experience working with small business SEO, nonprofit SEO, and corporate SEO, we successfully optimized our vacation rental website template to include some of the best SEO tools in the business. That way, you can get ahead of the competition without too much of a learning curve.
ADA Compliance
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), all public-facing businesses must comply with legally mandated accessibility guidelines–including vacation rentals and online websites. If you’re a property owner or manager, you need to ensure your vacation rental website supports the features recommended by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). A few of these features are:
- ALT text
- Readable fonts
- Multimedia captions
- Accessible navigation tools
- Keyboard functionality
Of course, accessibility is about so much more than just legal requirements. It’s also giving as many people as possible the chance to enjoy your vacation rental property. That’s why we made sure to build accessibility features into our short-term rental template, so you’ll have no trouble adhering to ADA web guidance.
Scalability
Short-term rentals are popular for many reasons, one of them being the sheer amount of diversity in the industry. From intimate cottages in the forest to stunning luxury condos in the middle of the city, today’s travelers can really have it all. Property owners and managers who embrace the dynamic nature of the market are rewarded with lots of growth opportunities.
If you’re hoping to scale your short-term rental business in the future, then it’s a good idea to prioritize scalability when building your short-term rental website. If not, you may end up wasting time and money when adding new property listings in the future. Here are a few reasons why your short-term rental website needs to scale:
- Accommodation for Growth
- Improved Performance
- Enhanced User Experience
- Customization Opportunities
- Adaptability to Market Changes
At Slam, we believe in our clients. That’s why we design all our products with your future growth in mind. Our vacation rental website template is built for flexibility and adaptability, so you can grow as much as you want without sacrificing resources or user experience.
Direct Booking Features
Even the most elegant and user-friendly website in the world won’t get you very far if people can’t figure out how to book your short-term vacation rental. After all, reservations are the whole point! That’s why integrated direct booking functionality is an essential feature–one we were sure to include in our vacation rental website template.
Of course, it isn’t enough to have a booking option on your short-term rental website. In order to convert traffic into paying guests, your reservation process must be streamlined for easy navigation. Otherwise, you risk losing prospective customers. That’s why we integrated user-friendly booking capabilities into our short-term rental website builder.
Thanks to Slam’s tools, your short-term rental direct booking website will make it easy for clients to trust your business and hit the ‘Book Now’ button without a second thought.
Technical Support
We’re confident saying our rental property website template is as close to perfect as you’ll find on the market. Of course, even perfection requires assistance every now and again. At Slam, we understand that sometimes questions and confusions arise. That’s why we include comprehensive technical support with all our products.
No matter the question–whether about SEO optimization, mobile responsiveness, or how to add a new page–we’ve got your back. If you need assistance, all you have to do is send us an email, and we’ll quickly connect with one of our technical support specialists. Don’t worry, a real human will reply–no bots allowed!
How to Partner with Slam Media Lab
As an award-winning website design agency with 10+ years of experience, we understand the benefits of partnership and collaboration–especially when it comes to marketing strategy and brand identity! Working with talented and driven entrepreneurs, business owners, and property managers to create and promote awesome products is our favorite part of the job.
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Here are a few of the exceptional services we offer:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Webflow Design & Development
- Content Writing & Strategy
- Brand Strategy & Identity
We’ve also designed a ton of great products and resources to help you craft the perfect short-term rental website. Here are three tools we built to ensure your site gets set up for success:
If you need a more hands-on, collaborative approach, don’t hesitate to contact us for a free 30-min website consultation. We’d love to learn more about your project and marketing objectives!
