Google's conversion toolbox: valuable and simple tips on improving user experiencing provided by Google at this week's Travolution Summit.
The search giant's research suggests consumers make 12 travel searches over 22 travel sites during a period of 29 days before making a purchase so ensuring they find what they want and can buy it easily should be the centre of your universe.
eCommerce project manager Graham Cooke suggested a four step plan:
* Identify the problem - where people are falling through your site using data that goes beyond your visitor numbers
* Diagnose why people are falling through by listening to customers through user groups and online surveys.
* Test solutions on your customers
* Implement
It's not rocket science and Google believes the search function is one of the biggest areas for improvement with many travel companies are losing customers there.
There's also room for improvement on small areas from the size of images to the 'buy' button.
Google is happy to 'eat its own dog food', - translates as practise what you preach - especially as it saw a 56% improvement on its own adwords conversion.
Frommers Unlimited also threw in a few website nasties from some its latest user research with old information, misleading pictures, hidden fees and deadlinks among the worst online crimes.
And suggestions from Frommers' customers on how to improve included a 'more honest approach' and providing a 'complete price'.
Seems crazy that travel websites are falling down on such apparently simple fixes.
One delegate even went as far as to say that travel sites are among the worst legacy sites with no consideration for search engine optimisation, content or multivariate testing.
Harsh words or food for thought?
Google's feedback is spot on. With so many existing tools (many of which are free), all marketing depts should take advantage to understand site analytics, optimize and increase monetization.
As for the delegate who said travel sites are among the worst at SEO, content and multivariate testing, I think this might apply more to offline publishers who are trying to increase their online presence rather than the category as a whole.
So many travel companies are plainly just getting the basics wrong online and forgetting key marketing best practices. The biggest of all is their brand and how they transfer this to the personality and usability of their site. If you ignore your brand and dont differentiate your offering then you are left to compete on one element ..... price! We all know this is the case for a huge number of travel companies and we also know that prices only go one way.
I agree with the comments above. Also it's interesting to note that many travel companies continue to spend large amounts on PPC before allocating a budget towards usability studies, and correcting these often simple mistakes. This leads to the PPC spend being ineffective and the website leaking traffic.