A website is one of the most crucial marketing assets for every business. It’s a powerful tool for growing your online presence and boosting brand awareness. It even helps reinforce brand reputation, credibility, and trust.
Moreover, a website is essential for implementing digital marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. A well-designed and optimized website can also go a long way to amplify leads, sales, and revenue.
illustration by Alex Arutuynov
But here’s the thing - there are nearly 200 million live websites on the internet right now. So, unless your website stands out from the crowd, it’ll fail to attract and retain visitors and convert them into customers.
Of course, you can use SEO and content marketing to increase your website’s visibility in relevant search engine results pages (SERPs). However, it’ll only yield any actual conversions and revenue when you empower your website with the right features.
For instance, integrating weather data into your website can be a great way to provide more value to potential customers. It’s particularly useful for certain types of websites, such as event ticketing platforms and news publication sites.
Nevertheless, including weather forecasts on your website involves a series of steps, including finding and configuring the right API. It’s only natural to wonder whether your target consumers are even going to use this feature.
Are you still in two minds about integrating weather forecasts into your website? In this blog, we’ll outline a few compelling reasons for going that extra mile. We’ll also explore simple techniques to include weather data on your website. Let’s get started.
What are the benefits of providing weather data on your website?
Here’s the thing - your target consumers are already checking weather forecasts on their phones and computers. Providing this information on your website helps improve the user experience and ensures that they can access relevant data without exiting your website.
Let’s say you run an international travel booking website. A customer who’s planning a summer holiday in Spain would want to check the weather in Spanish cities before finalizing their itinerary. They’d want to know the chances of rain, heatwaves, and extreme weather events during their trip.
If they don’t find these details on your website, they’ll need to use a third-party weather app or site to check the weather in Spain. Considering the number of travel booking platforms available on the internet, the chances of this user returning to your website are fairly slim.
So, how can you ensure that they stay on your website for longer and convert into a customer? A simple yet effective solution is to provide them with relevant weather forecasts for their desired location on your website.
It’ll give you a competitive advantage over similar platforms. Also, the longer a visitor stays on your website, the more likely they’re to check out other products/service pages. It can be instrumental in improving your website’s bounce rate and time-on-site.
illustration by Jason Zhan
If you’re familiar with how search engines work, you’d know that they have an affinity toward websites with better engagement rates. Thus, integrating weather data into your website can skyrocket your website’s search engine ranking too.
Ultimately, all these factors will contribute towards increasing organic website traffic and conversions. This, in turn, will positively impact sales and revenue. Thus, adding the feature of weather forecasts to your website will help grow your business.
Having said that, you shouldn’t blindly go about the integration. You should first analyze your target audience and determine if weather data is relevant to the product/service you’re offering.
For instance, if you’re selling CRM and marketing automation tools, chances are your target audience isn’t expecting to check the weather on your website. Adding irrelevant weather data can adversely affect the user experience and drive potential customers away from your website.
Typically, integrating weather data is beneficial for the following types of websites:
- News websites
- Online newspapers
- E-magazines
- Travel booking websites (including hotel and flight reservation websites)
- Event ticketing platforms
How to integrate weather data into your website?
You can always hire a developer to reinvent the wheel and create the right code to add weather forecasts to your website. However, this process is going to be expensive, slow, and inefficient.
Instead, if your website is built on WordPress, you can use a wide array of weather plugins and widgets, such as:
- Simple Weather
- Always Sunny Weather Widget
- Location Weather
- Astero
Download the plugin and install it on your website. And voila! You’re ready to configure weather data into your website.
But what if your website is custom coded or built on another platform? You just have to find the right weather API and integrate it on your website. From ClimaCell API and AccuWeather to OpenWeatherMap and Meteogroup - you’ll find plenty of reliable and feature-rich weather API options on the internet.
What techniques have you used to integrate weather data on your website? Share your tips in the comments section below.
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