5 reasons to better not use iframe integration in your website

Find out why iframes are not always the best way to integrate an online booking solution on your website

Last update [Mar 28, 2022]

Many tours and activity providers preferably think of using an iframe integration for their own website. It’s easy to integrate and can look seamlessly integrated to your customers. Iframes are embedded as a piece of content from one web page into another web page. Iframes are also referred to as inline frames.

But there are a couple of reasons why the integration of an iframe is not the ideal solution for tour and activity websites. 

Reason 1: Iframe causes usability issues

With an iframe integration, your users are eventually facing a couple of usability issues. 

The content, displayed in the iframe, could break (as it doesn’t fit in the iFrame) and therefore look odd. The main purpose of displaying content on your website is to convince your users to book, so it should always look good. Another disadvantage of an iframe integration is that it could break the navigation, either in the iFrame itself (and not correctly working when you go back and forth) or in the navigation of the page where the iframe is integrated. 

Reason 2: Iframe causes problems with mobile devices

Iframes are not responsive. Only the page where the iframe is integrated can be responsive. This might cause issues when your customers are opening your websites (with integrated iframe) with a mobile device. 

There are options to avoid this of course, which are very complex to implement and often missed.

Reason 3: Security issues with iframe integration

Using iframes with Safari has some security limitations. Safari discards cookies set in iFrame for its own security purposes, so it is not possible to use them on different websites. There are some workarounds, but they require some development work (creating subdomains and mapping them to TrekkSoft, for example).

Reason 4: Iframe causes SEO problems

We all use SEO (search engine optimization) to optimize our ranking and be found better via search engines. 

But content displayed via iframes may not be indexed and available to appear in Google's search results. Since search engines consider the content in iframes to belong to another website, it probably has no effect as iframes tend to neither help nor hurt your search engine ranking. Instead of using an iframe, create pages that Google can crawl and associate with your site easily, so you increase your ranking.

Reason 5: Iframe causes issues with Google Analytics Tracking

An iframe is seen as an independent web page embedded in an existing web page. Google is treating both pages separately and is first loading the main web page and identifying if it has an integrated iframe. Now, if you don't have Google Analytics installed on the iframe page it will not track the page being loaded.

But luckily there are a lot of other options besides the iframe integration that tour and activity providers can use to integrate their booking system on the website.

We at TrekkSoft recommend using a “Book now” button. It offers you the most flexibility to create your own web page, add content, pictures, etc., and add a prominent “book now” button to display a booking widget with a calendar.