ADVERTISING/MARKETING/PROMOTION:

Websites For The Haunt Industry

If your website looks decent but doesn’t sell tickets, book buyers, capture leads, or rank on Google, it’s not doing its job. Here are the issues and solutions to help you get a fast, modern, search-friendly website for any haunted attraction or haunt-industry-related company. These solutions are designed to turn traffic into revenue.

Awesome Websites Designed to Produce Traffic & Convert Visitors to Buyers

Here are 4 PROBLEMS with most every Haunted House Industry website... and the ways to fix them:

FACT: Most haunt-related websites appear old and dated due to a lack of investment in keeping the "Style-current" and have outdated design trends like cluttered layouts, heavy drop shadows, and non-responsive, fixed-width designs. The rapid evolution of user expectations, along with technical constraints such as slow loading times, can make a site feel untrustworthy or neglected. Think about haunted houses 10 years ago - black paint, black cloth, actors that jump out and scream Boo! If that is what you want your haunted house to be, then a dated, old-style haunted house website is probably okay. However, if you want a site that , gets attention, cuts through the clutter, has impact, reinforces your image and supports your brand... and brings in more customers, it's most likely time for a change.

1. YOUR SITE DOES NOT STAND OUT
They all look the same. The "ME TOO EFFECT". For whatever reason in the haunt industry, everyone seems to want to be like everyone else. This is one of the biggest issues with marketing. How are you going to get attention and stand out if your advertising (yes, including your website) looks like everyone else. You may try to convince yourself that "yours is different", but the fact is that's probably not the case. Certainly not different enough to set your site apart from the competition. In a recent study, potential haunted house visitors reviewed just over 100 haunted house websites. Over 97% were considered close or similar in design, look, and general feel, and were most likely produced by the same web company or using the same template. Haunted House websites are kind of silly-looking. Especially when you consider how sophisticated many haunts are, with advanced props, more technically sound animatronics, Hollywood-style set design, solid storylines, and better-trained actors. 

SOLUTION: Think outside the box. Design outside the box. The fact is, most Haunted House Websites and industry vendors follow what everyone else is doing. There are only a few people developing sites in this industry, and designers cannot help but use what's tried and true (in other words, similar things that they've done for other haunts).
If you're struggling to come up with something dynamic, feel free to talk to us. Our team designs and develops over a hundred sites a year, and we LOVE to be different! Feel free to contact us, and if nothing else, bounce ideas back and forth. We are in the industry to help! See contact info here or call us at 574.259.5959

2. YOUR SITE LOADS SLOWLY OR IS MOBILE CLUNKY
One of the biggest issues in ranking today is "slow load". There are many things you can do to make sites load super fast, including proper image optimization, reducing and delaying JavaScript, using caching and a CDN, optimizing your CSS, improving your server and backend response times, and managing your fonts properly. Plus, there are several other things you can do to ensure your site loads faster (or even Super Fast).

YOUR SITE IS NOT RANKING PROPERLY
We've already discussed one of the big reasons that sites do not rank like they could (slow loading sites), however, here are some other important factors:

the content does not match the search
your page has weak or untrustworthy content
your site has poor technical SEO / crawl issues
your site has weak on-page optimization
you have weak authority/backlinks
you have thin local SEO (for local businesses)
your content strategy needs improved
your site has poor internal structure and/or missing schema

While there are other things you can do to make your site rank better, these are certainly the top issues

SOLUTIONS: This becomes very complex but necessary (even for the professionals in the industry. However, to get your site ranking properly, you need to focus on each one of the subjects above, and while you may need to do more than that, this is the very best starting place. 
* Develop content that matches exactly what your potential target audience is searching for. You need to do this in a clever way that's not overly obvious or cheesy.
* Review your content on a regular basis to make sure it's trustworthy
* SEO is obviously a catchphrase today, but anyone trying to rank a site needs a great SEO expert. Word of caution: tread carefully here. There are many, many so-called SEP experts who are getting rich off of unsuspecting small businesses.
* Ensure that everything is optimized properly with the right developer and the right optimization tools.
* Make sure that you have genuine, solid backlinks and thatyour site shows authority or ranking will be clipped.
* See our comments about SEO. A good SEO professional should be able to handle backend and on-page SEO.
* We all have heard the phrase, Content is King. Well, in this case, that's true. Make sure you do not inundate your visitors, but having enough of "the right" content is going to make a difference.
* The structure of your site has become more and more important over the last few years. Study what you need to do to improve it, or hire a reliable professional to help you.
 

3. SIGNIFICANT "MUST FIND QUICKLY"  ITEMS ARE NOT BEING FOUND QUICKLY ENOUGH 
When visitors finally reach your site, ensure that items like "Tickets" and "Contact Information" are easy to find. 

SOLUTIONS: Make sure it's EASY for your customers to reach your tickets page. It should either be embedded in your header (if you have a sticky header), float as you scroll, or be placed perfectly throughout the site. People cannot purchase tickets if they ca't find the Ticket Page.
Also, make sure your contact info is readily available and prominently displayed. throughout the site. Many businesses fail here.

4. YOU'RE NOT GETTING THE CONVERSION RATE YOU NEED 
Again, when visitors reach your site, your main goal should be to convert them into customers. Conversion can be achieved in many ways (first, with exciting content, great flow, and the right CTAs). Losing potential customers because you did not do these things is tragic.  

SOLUTIONS: Ensure your site is user-friendly. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate. Make sure your site delivers your brand in the most positive way. Make sure that your site delivers an exceptional image... even if you are a haunted house.

BEST HAUNTED HOUSE FEATURES