Drawbacks of the Old Widget
The old version of the Hotellook hotels map widget had two primary shortcomings:
- Installing the widget was only possible through iframe, which caused long widget load times and incompatibility with different devices. For example, on mobile devices, the map looked small and it was hard to press exactly on the circles of hotel clusters, while the tooltips were unreadable.
- Customer journeys were too long. On the old map, hotel clusters were indicated by circles. When clicking on one of these clusters, it would break into several smaller clusters and so on. To find a particular hotel, the user sometimes had to click on the map up to six times.
These shortcomings reduced the conversion of affiliate website visitors to Hotellook customers.
Advantages of the New Widget
When developing the new hotels map widget, we tried to take into account all the shortcomings and drawbacks of the old version.
The Widget Is Integrated Into a Website Through the Script:
- The script is easy to add to any website or blog.
- The script can load quickly, as it is loaded asynchronously by default.
- The map looks beautiful on any device and is easy to use.
Customer Journey Is Decreased Significantly
The map no longer shows clusters in circles. Every pin on the map represents a hotel and shows the price per night. The number of pins shown simultaneously is limited. The map displays hotels with higher ratings and a minimum price.
When hovering a cursor over a pin, users will see a hotel tooltip (which they previously would have needed to click on the hotel pin to see).
Now, by clicking anywhere (a pin or tooltip), the user will open the Hotellook website.
Users Understand What They Are Seeing on the Map
The old cluster circles didn’t provide much information to the user. Now, the map shows both hotel locations and room rates. By only looking at the map, users will already understand which hotels best suit their needs and check the tooltips of those locations. There is no need to click clusters several times to open the hotel tooltips.
How to Integrate the New Map Widget Into Your Website
Go to your personal account on the Hotellook affiliate program page. You can find the map widget among the program tools.
Copy it and integrate the script into your website. If this is your first time working with Travelpayouts widgets, read more about setting and integrating widgets in our knowledgebase.
The previous version of the map widget isn’t available anymore in your personal account. If you are using the old version of the widget on your website, it will automatically be upgraded to the new version.
IMPORTANT: We forcibly left the new widget code in iframe in case of their automatic replacement. The widget will have a new look and keep all the shortcomings of iframe integration, including slow load times and non-adaptively.
To benefit from the new widget, manually change the iframe code to script. Have you already noticed that maps on your website have been upgraded? What do you think of the new version? Leave questions and reviews in the comments below or send them to our support team.
