How to Handle Them

Approaching a new website project can often feel daunting, but with the correct tools, guidance and genuine insight – it needn’t be! We’re here to help, work out if it’s a good mutual fit, and above all else, deliver a stunning new (and hopefully) high-converting website.

But what separates a sale from a stall?

It may sound cliché, but objections really aren’t objections at all, and they definitely aren’t rejections. Objections are in reality a chance to build trust by addressing real concerns head-on.

Each objection is a chance to demonstrate commercial knowledge, provide best-practice advice and talk about what’s working and what isn’t.

Let’s start with one of the most commonly encountered objections of all time (literally).

“I’m struggling a bit here, the price is too high…”

Price can sometimes feel steep at first glance. There’s always a worry if this objection has been raised, that we may not have communicated the value of the service successfully at some point along the way – but sometimes it’s inevitable.

The first port of call for us is to justify the value, rather than defend the price. We may be a little biased, but we’d argue your website is one of the most important revenue-generating assets your hotel has. It’s your digital front door, conversion engine, and very often the very first impression a potential guest has of your brand. When it’s done well, it doesn’t just look great – it can seriously help turn more visitors into direct bookings.

It’s also worth asking: what’s the cost of leaving things as they are? The cost of every missed direct booking or unnecessary OTA commission can soon pile up and snowball. Sometimes, doing nothing can end up costing more than investing in getting it right.

With that being said, at UP we’ll always be transparent with our quoting. Our pricing is tied directly to clearly defined deliverables. If budget is a deciding factor, we’ll often revisit the scope without jeopardising quality, perhaps taking a more condensed approach or adjusting design allocation and feedback rounds to make sure we can deliver something special at the right price point.

“We’ll need to see something before committing to buying?”

We can address this one pretty simply. Each and every design our designers approach will be from the ground up. Background research, USPs, the market you occupy. The entire thing. As a result, the team will then get to work on beautifully unique designs. For this reason, creating a “free” mockup just isn’t representative of the service or quality we’re known for!

This objection often lends itself to another, which may be “Can’t you just provide some free mockups?” We aim to make this as informed a decision as possible by providing an assortment of hand-picked, high-impact case studies. It’s not unheard of to quote for a prototype if completely essential, but we’ll rarely need to.

“Will this work with our booking engine or PMS?”

This is a very common question we receive and actually a completely valid one – you’ll want to make sure your booking engine and the software you use to run the day-to-day operations of your hotel work swimmingly with a new website! Compatibility is nearly always a concern. We’ll discuss options early, factor in embed vs full API integration and account for all of this within the project. Luckily there’s not much WordPress can’t handle or integrate with!

“Alex, ongoing costs post-launch? What’s all that about?”

Post-launch, security, site speed and website health are a lot more important than they seem on the surface. We want to ensure your site has maximum uptime, around-the-clock support and snappy load times. Not only will we aim to host on WP Engine, but we also offer a support and maintenance package (tiered based on site size and traffic), provided under an hourly allocation per month.

The very same team that built the site will maintain and support you on an ongoing basis. We’ve learnt the foundations and want to keep them in top shape! You’ll even receive priority support ticket access.

This is almost guaranteed to bring about questions on turnaround times! Luckily at UP, we have support managers assigned to each client and ticket prioritisation is actually built directly into their workflow.

“I’m not convinced we’ll hit that timeline”

When we present any new website project, we’ll present a total and breakdown in weeks. We welcome discussions surrounding the timeline, especially as it’s always a well-informed roadmap based on deliverables and hourly allocations to different departments across the agency.

We communicate very early on that the timeline factors in time from you – the client! If you’ve got a go-live that needs to be pretty strict due to a compelling event or upcoming seasonal busyness, we’ll factor this in. Great communication and timely client feedback can really speed things up too!

“We’re definitely a bit concerned about losing traffic having built up a strong SEO profile over the years”

And rightly so! This is a completely valid concern, and actually one we receive often. Before speaking to us, we know you’ll have likely spent a good amount of time building organic rankings and traffic, or even working with an agency to optimise things.

So we get it – we understand the fear of losing the momentum you’d have worked so hard to create. Getting migration wrong could result in a real dip in visibility almost overnight.

This is why we have a concrete, reliable migration plan that tackles every concern. It includes URL mapping, redirects, metadata preservation and post-launch monitoring. This, in conjunction with foundational SEO, ensures you don’t just keep your organic performance intact – it’s actually lifted for go-live!

“This all sounds great but I’m really not all that technical”

Well then, it’s a good job that you don’t need to be. Not only do we build on WordPress Gutenberg, one of the most beginner-friendly CMS backends to learn, but we’ll provide training on using our flexible page builder tool!

Creating new pages, updating your website for seasonal content and offers is super straightforward, and we’ll even record the demo/training if you ever need to come back to anything.

“How do I know I’m comparing proposals properly?”

Now you know some of the hurdles we have to overcome in illustrating the value of partnering with us, we wanted to leave you with a practical checklist to keep in mind when comparing website proposals.

If you can tick all of these off – we’d say you’re likely in a great position to make an informed decision;

• Clear, itemised scope with no hidden costs
• Realistic timeline with defined milestones
• A documented SEO migration plan (where applicable)
• Booking engine and PMS integrations clearly outlined
• Hosting, support and ongoing costs explained upfront
• CMS training and post-launch support included

Whichever objection brought you here, the goal’s the same every time for us: making sure you end up with a website (and a partner) you’re genuinely excited about. If any of this strikes a chord, get in touch with the team. We don’t believe in launching a website and waving goodbye. We’re here to build a long-term relationship, support your business as it grows and helping your website scale with it!

Get in touch with UP