If you are in the business of selling
online travel to leisure travelers, you understand the value of SEO for
attracting more customers to your website. Though the importance of SEO is
relevant, what happens after you do get the customer to your website. It is
important to understand their needs and present your product that helps convert
the customer. With a rising look-to-book ratio, it is important to convert the
looks into bookings. Estimates suggest currently only 1-2% conversions happen
for any SEO or offline marketing campaigns. With the higher cost of acquisition,
it is important to get the customer the very first time they visit your website.
In my opinion following are the important factors that can affect retention of
your customer and convert more looks into bookings.
Price and Availability ?br> Studies by Internet analyst firms Gomez and
PhoCusWright, and also by TIA, have all identified price as being one of the key
motivating factors that encourages consumers to purchase travel products online.
For example, the PhoCusWright study found that competitive pricing is the best
way to attract customers. When travelers who haven’t bought online were asked
what would encourage them to do so, 64 percent said that saving money would make
them more interested. No other benefit ?saving time, getting bonus loyalty club
points, more control or obtaining better information, came close to this level
of response. According to Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown, almost six out of 10
leisure travelers now actively seek the "lowest possible price" for travel
services. Lastly, a study by the Joint Hospitality Industry Congress found that
there is a real expectation among consumers that Internet prices will be lower
than those in the "bricks and mortar" world. However, with the advent of
multiple online travel giants, the competition is not as much from the “Brick
and mortar?companies as it is from competitor websites. On average a leisure
traveler visits 3-4 websites before making a purchase.
Perhaps the most important factors in deciding whether a customer lead provided
by SEO or other offline marketing channels is going to be converted to a sale or
not is PRICE. Not only is important to provide a Low price guarantee labels on
your website but to actually conform to those Low Price Guarantees. Though
labeling of your website with Low Price Guarantees helps you position yourself
as the Lowest Price provider, the ultimate test is to conform to the Low Price
Guarantees. This would involve either manually checking competitor websites or a
more systematic approach would be to use a technology partner that can help in
using their search engine technologies in tracking the price and availability of
competitor firms.
Equally important is the Availability factor. In order to attract customer
loyalty, availability is a key issue. Having SOLD OUT on your properties does
not encourage customers to come back to your site. Also important is to have an
adequate number of properties available per star segment. If you are focused on
the up market and luxury market segment then it is important to have a
sufficient number of 4-5 star properties available on your website. However, if
you are targeting the budget market segment, a good collection of 1-3 star
properties is required. If you are focusing on the whole market a good
representation of all-star segments is essential.
Affiliates that use travel inventory from one of the big brand websites often do
not have control over either the pricing or availability. However, it is
important for the affiliates to research the pricing and availability trends for
the markets they operate in. Though they cannot control the pricing, the
affiliates can look at sourcing travel inventory from multiple other travel
intermediaries.
One Stop Shop V/s Specialize in Airfares or Hotels -
The big brands in online travel have been emphasizing on packaging especially
dynamically packaging. They can however do this because of their big size and
the ability to negotiate directly with the travel suppliers. There is no doubt
that the packaging is preferred by both the online brands as well as the
customers and thus making it a win-win situation for both. However for the
smaller online websites that focus on either certain segment of the marketplace
or focus on a geography ?providing a one-stop shop could not justify the
incremental costs. In order to make a business case your incremental costs
should be substantiated with over and above incremental revenues.
Layout and Content
It is important to have a third party conduct a usability study on your website
to judge the layout and content on your website. It is important to have
relevant and updated content on the travel inventory. Equally important is to
ensure a simple, straightforward booking process. Going through multiple pages
is sometimes tedious and can lead to the customer being distracted and exiting
your site.
Inclusive or Exclusive Rates
A number of websites today show exclusive rates when you first search for a
hotel on their website. It is after 2nd or 3rd page that you see the total
amount that is due for a hotel room night including taxes and service charges.
There are sites such as OctopusTravel and Hotelopia that do provide
all-inclusive rates on the first page itself. In my opinion, including
all-inclusive rates is a better strategy because of the following
1) Inclusive rates are easier to navigate, compare and understand. In case of
Exclusive rates, the user might have to navigate through multiple pages to get
to the final rate.
2) Exclusive rate can confuse the user and eventually result in loss of
patronage. With the inclusive rates, they are easier to understand and there is
no guesswork involved in understanding the total charges for the room.
Summary
Once you have the customer to your website, it is important you do everything in
your power to convert the look to book on your site. An effective SEO campaign
should be managed by an effective customer conversion strategy using above
methods.
About the Author,
Bhanu Chopra is the CEO of RateGain. RateGain provides Internet based
competitive pricing intelligence to the global travel industry. The mission is
to deliver a comprehensive view of Internet based travel airfare and hotel-rates
information to travel portals, airlines, hotel chains, travel inventory
consolidators and travel industry related market research firms. The
availability of this market intelligence enables our customers to reach their
price-decisions faster and remain ahead of the market by deciding appropriate
sales strategies. This in turn helps our customers increase their sales and
enhance efficiency of Internet as the preferred and low-cost medium of
transaction. For more information visit www.rategain.com or email
bchopra@rategain.com.