Visitor anxiety is one of the leading sources of friction and decreased website conversions. Anxiety can be caused by a number of things, from overwhelming menu options, poor navigation, or even just a bad website design. Naturally, identifying and decreasing visitor anxiety on your website will help you to build trust with your audience and increase conversions. 

Many times, the solution to easing user anxiety is simple: add trust signals, be transparent about what you will do with a user’s information from a form, use social proof, etc. 

But how do you ease anxiety over travel in the midst of pandemic?

The answer is to provide visitors with all the information they need up front. Don’t make them dig in your website – or worse, visit another website – to find the answers they are looking for. 

As COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift, many destination organizations are seeking effective ways to communicate with potential visitors and reduce or eliminate any anxieties they may have about future travel. One such organization is Visit Omaha. 

As Omaha began to reopen, the DMO wanted to find a better way to relay important information to their website visitors, including information regarding newly opened businesses and ongoing travel restrictions. Their Simpleview CRO Analyst recommended the use of a new FAQ widget that utilizes schema to feature questions and answers in an easy-to-navigate format. The widget also formats this information in such a way that it has the potential to show up in a rich snippet in Google’s search results, thus increasing the website’s organic search visibility. 

Visit Omaha opted to utilize this widget on their website to serve a list of common COVID-19-related questions that visitors may ask when planning their travel. In readily providing access to this information, Omaha was helping visitors ease their anxiety and set appropriate expectations for their trip. 

These questions were implemented on Visit Omaha’s COVID-19 landing page, as well as relevant category pages, including restaurants, things to do, attractions and hotels pages.