Build an Effective Tourism Website: Best Practices for BC Businesses

Your website is one of the most valuable digital assets your tourism business can have.

It’s often the first digital impression your organization makes—and unlike social media channels, it’s an asset you fully control. Unlike social platforms, your website gives you full control over how your business is presented, what’s prioritized, and how visitors navigate the experience. For tourism businesses in BC, this level of control matters. Whether you run an accommodation, attraction, or offer visitor experiences grounded in culture and place, your website helps you stay visible, build trust, and it can reflect your values better than any third-party platform.

A strong online presence is essential today. When people visit your website, they’re looking for information, and you have roughly eight seconds to capture their attention. Poorly structured or slow-loading sites create a weak first impression, and visitors are likely to leave, whether or not they find what they came for.

Design trends change. Accessibility standards do, too, as does SEO. That’s why it’s worth checking in on your site more often than you think—especially if it’s been a while.

So, what makes a great website—and how can you make yours stand out?  Here are some key elements to consider:

Your Website’s Purpose

Your website should have a clear overall purpose that supports your business goals. Before you begin designing or redesigning it, take the time to define its purpose. Is it to help potential guests learn about your area? To encourage online bookings? Is it aligned and reinforcing the messages you’re sharing elsewhere?

Each page should have a distinct theme and meet a specific need for your visitors. Once your purpose is clear and specific, you can start shaping your content and navigation to tell a cohesive story.

User Experience

People want information quickly, and prioritizing user experience is key.  Images, video, and other rich media can help tell the visual story of your business in seconds. These elements draw visitors in and encourage them to explore more of your website.

However, many websites are designed like scavenger hunts, making it hard for users to find what they need. To improve their experience, simplify your navigation, use clear calls to action (CTAs), and break up text-heavy content with headlines, subheadings, and bullet points.

Accessibility is also a key part of the user experience. Follow WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure your content is legible, accessible with a keyboard, and includes alt text for images. Consider inclusive language and design choices that welcome a wide range of visitors, including the use of accessible fonts and colours, and the integration of Indigenous languages, accents and specialized characters where appropriate.

Responsive Design

More than 50% of website browsing takes place on mobile devices, according to Google, with some sources suggesting this could be as high as 60%. So it’s essential that your website looks and navigates as well on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop (which is known as responsive design). And since there are so many different types of devices, your site needs to be compatible with all of them.

Mobile-first design is now a standard approach, and that means designing your site first for mobile users, and with desktop users as the secondary layout. Prioritizing mobile-friendly content helps improve SEO and ensures visitors can quickly find what they need on the go.

Website Speed

No one likes to wait long for a website to load, especially on mobile. A slow site is frustrating—and it can affect your search rankings, too.

Google recommends that your site load within two to three seconds. You can test your website speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights test. Ensure your website runs smoothly by optimizing videos and images for faster downloads and using a web host that can handle your bandwidth demands.

To help your site run faster, shrink or resize large images, minimize unnecessary extras or plugins, and utilize tools like browser caching or a content delivery network (CDN) to enhance speed.

Visuals & Imagery (Visual Storytelling)

It’s been said that an image is worth a thousand words, and this couldn’t be more true for websites! Having branded photography on a website is vital in showcasing your story. It ultimately sets the stage for the content that will follow. A single photo should be able to stop viewers in their tracks and leave them wanting to explore further into your site. The first impression is always the most important.

While there are many ways to approach travel photography, in BC, we often organize images into three practical categories to guide content planning: Signature, Experience, and Moments:

• Signature: Think dramatic vistas or cultural moments that stop people mid-scroll. They set the emotional tone right away.
• Experience: Experience-based photos help build context and deepen interest in the specific place and experience.
• Moments: Moment photos define specific moments and reach into additional senses like sight, sound, and smell. They are perfect for Instagram and other social media platforms.

Select and use images that reflect your values, such as sustainability, community, or connection to culture and place. Show authentic diversity in who is featured, including varied ages, abilities, and cultural backgrounds. If your visuals or stories reference Indigenous cultures or communities, collaborate directly with those communities and seek appropriate permissions. This ensures respectful representation and supports authentic storytelling.

Ensure all images on your site are high-quality and sized appropriately to achieve fast load speeds.

Learn more about how you can align your imagery with BC’s destination brands.

Website Copy

Photos might draw people in, but it’s the copy that helps them stick around—and remember, you want to create copy that tells a story, rather than simply listing features. Ultimately, you want to deliver a message that will leave a lasting impression on visitors before they leave your site.

Here are five types of content:

• Informative content boosts your search engine visibility and helps visitors find what they need. Think: answers to common questions, detailed guides on what to do in the area, or practical travel tips. As search engines rely more on AI to summarize results, clear and helpful content increases your chance of being referenced or surfaced.
• Entertaining content highlights your personality and encourages sharing, particularly by travel media. It might include humour, behind-the-scenes stories, or user-generated content (UGC) from your guests.
• Narrative or story-driven content draws people in and helps them move toward making a decision. For example, a local guide sharing favourite trails, or a chef reflecting on seasonal ingredients and local connections helps humanize the business and build an emotional connection.
• Itinerary-based content is highly practical and easy for travellers to use, and provides you the chance to collaborate with nearby businesses or partners. Tailor this type of content to different visitor types—like families, solo travellers, or culture seekers—and highlight your unique perspective or local knowledge.
• Sales-driven content guides visitors toward taking action (or conversions)—like booking, purchasing, or contacting you. It includes clear calls-to-action, booking widgets, seasonal offers, packages, and value-focused language that speaks to your visitors’ needs. Think “Book your spot now for summer fishing,” “Save 10% on weekday stays,” or “Limited spots available for cultural walking tours.”

Use plain, inclusive language and avoid business-speak and jargon. Match your tone to your values and audience_, whether you’re writing for families, adventure-seekers, or those seeking cultural connection.

Choosing A Platform

There are many types of website platforms, each with its own strengths. WordPress is the most frequently used platform, offering flexibility and advanced features, while Squarespace and Wix are great options for simple, budget-friendly setups. Shopify is ideal for businesses that focus on online sales. Of course, some businesses prefer the flexibility of a custom-built site, developed and supported by a professional agency or contractor.

Choosing the right platform depends on your goals, comfort level with technology, and plans for future growth. As your needs evolve, you can also explore add-ons such as AI-powered chat tools, multilingual plugins, or booking systems—especially helpful for small tourism businesses seeking to serve guests efficiently and in real-time.

SEO & Keywords

The primary objective of a website is to be discoverable by potential guests and to provide them with the information they need. To improve your visibility on Google, you need to apply search engine optimization (SEO) and use keywords strategically. While many factors affect SEO ranking, here are four key areas to focus on:

• Site content relevance: Google evaluates how closely your content aligns with what users are searching for. The keywords or phrases you use should reflect the content on your site. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help identify the terms your guests are likely to search.
• Duplicate content: copying and pasting the same text across multiple pages or websites can hurt your rankings.
• Site security: Make sure your site is secure. This means the URL of your website starts with https:// instead of http://, showing that it uses a secure, encrypted connection. You’ll usually see a padlock icon in the browser bar. This helps protect visitor data (especially for bookings or email sign-ups) and is also a factor Google uses to rank websites.
• Site content quality: Google also considers the quantity of content on a page, its frequency of updates, and whether it includes rich media such as images or video. “Fresh” content is valuable for search engine rankings.
• Inbound linking: The number and quality of websites linking to yours are a strong ranking factor. Avoid buying links—instead, grow them organically. Links from high-authority sources (like government sites) carry more weight than those from smaller blogs.
• Social media activity: Google also takes cues from social media. If your content is shared widely, that can boost visibility. Adding social sharing buttons on your site can encourage this.

Modern SEO also includes optimizing for voice search (e.g., “What are the best wildlife tours near Tofino?”) and adding behind-the-scenes tags called structured data. It’s easy to get caught up in rankings. But if your site is useful and engaging, Google tends to catch on eventually.

Your website is one of the most powerful tools you have to connect with travellers. When it’s clear, accessible, and tells a compelling story, people notice—and they tend to return. Keep it current. Make it easy to navigate. And always build with people in mind. A well-crafted site does more than inform; it invites visitors in and leaves a lasting impression.