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Offline US Travelers are Moving Online

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

A new report out by PhocusWright highlight the many online travel trends.  No surprise, online travel is strong and growing.  Following are a couple of highlights from the report: 

  • Exclusive online buyers account for two-thirds of all online travelers and represent an important source of future revenue opportunity. Players in the U.S. online travel market need to stay on top of the latest intelligence about their customers.
  • OTAs dominate every leisure travel component category purchased online and across different travel scenarios tested. This underscores not only the power of increased advertising spend but their broadening reach, brand awareness, appeal to the novice user, diverse content, complex offering and user-focused approach.
  • Despite increased rates and increasing economic pressures last year, hotel was the top component purchased overall. This underscores consumers’ need for a change in venue to really disengage while traveling for leisure, ability to find deals and the plethora of inventory and more unique hotel options available online.
  • With half of online travelers using the same purchase method for leisure as they do for business travel, travel providers have the opportunity to cross-sell leisure travel to this coveted group of business travelers.
  • Frequent travelers and seasoned online buyers continue to dominate, but now the former “diehard” offline users have begun to use the Internet as their usual method for travel shopping and purchasing. As novice users, this “late majority” possesses different travel and purchase behavior, has varying levels of online technology savvy, requires different messaging and is demographically unique.

    • The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition

    What does this mean to you, the vacation rental manager?  You better be online – in a simple & pleasant way.  Have an online experience that is similar to what travelers will find in booking business travel.  Vacation homes are right in the sweet-spot of the trend that people need a change of scenario to vacation.  Know your target customer, and niche – because you will get outspent in marketing by the big online travel agencies.

    Ralf
    www.liverez.com

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    Posted in Industry Trends, Online Bookings, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    Forget Keywords; It is about Keyphrases for Vacation Rental Searches

    Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

    Whether you are SEO’ing or PPC’ing – it all comes down to having the right words in mind, and focusing your efforts on those words.  The word ‘New York’ is very powerful.  So is the word ‘Skiing’.  But think about how many different contexts these words can be used in, and how many cyber-sellers are using these works to position themselves and their products/services on the web.

    OK – nothing new so far.  But here is the new statistic – the Average Google search has 4 words!!  One place to check out how different keywords, and keyword phrases compare to each other is in Google Trends:  http://www.google.com/trends

    That means your target vacationers are not thinking about which word they should search on, but which phrase to search on.  Shoppers are no longer inputting single words or a couple of related words.  They are searching on meaningful phrases that define very specific target content.

    So my advice is, think in terms of meaningful phrases that define what your target prospects are searching for.  Not ‘New York’ or ‘Skiing’, but ‘New York Family Ski Vacation’.

    Happy booking!

    Ralf
    www.liverez.com

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    Posted in Industry Trends, Online Bookings, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    Seeing the Forest for the Trees – Do you need traffic or bookings?

    Friday, May 16th, 2008

    Today I had another one of those conversations I often have about online vacation rental solutions:

    “Hi, this is Ralf”
    “Hi, I need some help with getting online bookings.  I need to get SEO.  I need to get PPC.  I need to get more traffic to my site.”
    “Ok.  What do you know about the visitors to your site?  Where are they coming from?  What are the clicking on?  How many are booking?”
    “I don’t know.  I know I need more traffic”

    This is when I take a long sigh, and start into my spiel about the importance of conversions.  Suddenly he says, “Well of course.  Kind of forgot about that equation.”

    The equation he is referring to is the “impressions turn into click-throughs, turn into site visitors, turn into bookings”.  So it is as much about what you do with the visitors once they are on your site, as it is about how much traffic you generate to the site.  It is something that in the ‘heat of the battle’ is often forgotten because some of us are judged on characteristics such as number of visitors, or impressions.

    So always remember, the key statistic is the number of bookings.  Work backwards from there and see how you can influence the numbers in the equation – whether conversion or audience.

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    Posted in Online Bookings, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    Conversions – that is the trick, not just traffic

    Thursday, March 27th, 2008

    There are lots of ways to increase conversions on your website. Using the right images, testing different buttons on calls to action, decreasing the number of pages in your booking process. There are tools to help you do this, multivariate and split testing tools.

    But one thing you can do before you even get to that point is proper keyword research. Conversions on your site start way back here.

    I have seen many people bid on (or worse yet, SEO for) a keyword because it has a lot of searches. Obviously we want traffic to our website, because more traffic = more sales. Well, yes and no, more of the right kind of traffic = more sales.

    A good way to do this is to take your internal site search and run some reports. There is a lot of information about how people view and search for your vacations. For example, you may have properties in Southern California.  However, your internal search reports may show that most of your visitors search for “california beaches”.

    Semantics right? However, if that makes the difference in how people view your offering and influences them to book, then it’s obvious what word you should use in your marketing.

    The research is worth it, in the long run it will pay off. Instead of trying to fit square pegs into round holes, you can spend your conversion efforts fitting round pegs into round holes.

    Ralf

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    Posted in Online Bookings, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    Upcoming Webinar by LiveRez

    Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

    Here is an upcoming webinar I will be hosting, and for obvious reasons, recommend.

      Join us for a Webinar on April 16

     
       
    A discussion on how to design your vacation rental website for increased conversion of visitors into booked guests.  See examples of some of the industries best.  Learn how usability, affinity, trust, and analytics play a critical role in driving bookings from your website.
    Title:   Vacation Rental Website Basics – Turning Lookers into Bookers
    Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2008
    Time: 11:00 PM – 12:00 AM MDT

     

    System Requirements
    PC-based attendees
    Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
    Macintosh®-based attendees
    Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer

     

    Space is limited.
    Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
    https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/756835694

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    Posted in LiveRez News, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    eCommerce Tips Which Apply To Online Travelers

    Thursday, March 6th, 2008

    I believe that we can learn much from online shopping and apply this to our online vacation rental business.  In that spirit, see the information below.

    In conjunction with The E-Tailing Group’s 10th Annual Mystery Shopping Study of 100 eCommerce sites, the group defined 11 “must have” customer service features.  Of the 100 sites they considered only 11 sites provided all of the features. Can you see how each can apply to your web experience?

    + Provide real-time inventory status on product pages or in the shopping cart
    + Display shipping status and order confirmation in the shopping cart
    + Send an email confirmation of the order
    + Display your toll-free number on your homepage
    + Provide prominent keyword search functionality
    + Respond to emailed questions within 25 hours
    + Deliver packages within 4 days of order being placed
    + Require 6 or fewer steps at checkout
    + Display recommended products on product or cart pages
    + Display customer service hours
    + Show holiday shopping deadlines

    These can split into a few subsets: site features, order fulfillment and customer interaction.  It is the interaction that will really makes or breaks the experience fro shoppers.

    Ralf

    Posted in Industry Trends, Online Bookings, Online Marketing, Website | No Comments »

    Why most guests do not book on the first visit to your website

    Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

    I had an enlightening conversation today with a property manager about his website.  We discussed all aspects of his website and spent quite some time about conversion of visitors.  In our discussion about ‘first-time’ visitors, he explained something to me that now seems so obvious.

    First-time visitors are researching and looking to make a decision.  BUT, most of the time they cannot make a decision.  they first need to share the information with others who are also coming on the trip with them – family, friends, mothers-in-law, pets, etc……If their family is like mine, then everyone has an opinion.

    So they need an easy way to share the information with others.  Provide them a path to the website, send a summary, send a picture, whatever it takes.  The faster and the more convenient, then higher likelihood that you will get the booking.

     Ralf

    Posted in Website | No Comments »

    Free Website Reporting Tools

    Monday, February 11th, 2008

    Who doesn’t like free stuff? I know I do. As of this writing, I’ve been playing with some free internet marketing tools. How long they remain free? Who knows. There are some really cool analytics tools that you can use on your website right now to increase performance. Here’s a short list:

    • Google Analytics- Every website should have an analytics tool. There are many analytics reporting suites out there, but Google’s is free. Track your visits, your conversions, your visitor behavior, etc.
    • Google Optimizer- In your AdWords account, Google has always made it possible to split test your ad copy. With the optimizer tool, you can now split test different sections of your landing page. Test headlines, images, copy, etc. A great way to increase the conversion rate of a page. AdWords isn’t free, but Google Optimizer, working with AdWords, is free.
    • CrazyEgg.com- A click map/heat map reporting tool. This tool tracks the clicks on a certain page and generates a heat map, showing which areas of your page get the most attention. Combine this with the Google Optimizer and you’ll know what areas to run for split testing.

    You don’t have to spend a lot of money for good reporting. These tools can help you increase the performance of your website on a shoestring budget.

     Ralf

    Posted in Website | No Comments »

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