Analytics metrics have risen in importance over the last few years, as appearing to be outdated to customers and competitors can take a big chunk out of revenues and profits. It’s important to get your head around metrics and fully understand what it is they can do for your business and what could happen if they’re not fully utilised. Here are the top five you should know about Bounce rate.
The simplest definition of bounce rate is the number of visitors that reach a web page and then leave without exploring the website’s other pages. However, it does so much more than that, if you learn how to read the results properly. Bounce rate can tell you if the design, navigation, content and current marketing strategy are effective, or whether you need to rethink your game plan.
In terms of hotel and travel websites, it’s not limited to getting a customer to book a trip or stay, as the actions they can do involve much more, such as checking availability, reading blogs, watching a video and signing up to a newsletter. Once you have the raw data in front of you, it must be categorised or segmented to provide you with truly useful insights. For example, you could group the information by Facebook, Google AdWords or direct traffic. Some of the most common explanations of high bounce rates include poor landing page design, bad website navigation and painfully slow loading times. Average order/lifetime valueThis particular metric provides you with an insight into how much revenue your website is generating for you per visitor.
In the context of hotels and travel websites, the average order value equates to the total revenue or number of reservations that have been made. It helps you to understand how to lower your visitor churn, which means how quickly your prospective customers are leaving your website.
In addition, this metric could assist you in identifying which segments are performing the best, so you can try and replicate this success in other areas of the website. The metric is invaluable, as it can even help you to work out the average lifetime value of each visitor, who may keep coming back to you several times over a year. Being in the know when it comes to average order value and average lifetime metrics will help you to reach out to your most valuable section of customers first. Simply put, find out who your most loyal clients are and reach out to them on a regular basis. Custom goals While return on investment (ROI) is important, you must remember that tracked revenue is actually only a small part of what you need to be considering when you finalise marketing budgets.
You must always be taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, as this will ensure every penny you spend is a penny well spent. Pay less attention to all the actions a visitor can take on your website, rather than narrowing in on the moment customers enter their card details to pay for a hotel stay. Look at contact form submissions, as this will show you the top questions that are being asked. This information can then be incorporated into the website itself. Are customers watching videos? If so, which ones are being watched the most and when were they paused? Look at the list of people signing up to newsletters or following blogs, as these are the people who are most interested in your product, and could be the ones who are likely to keep returning to you for business. Keep setting custom goals for each action you want clients to take on your website and watch your business flourish. Website conversion rate This useful metric will show you how many visitors are actually parting with their hard-earned cash. To ensure you are getting this important data, your booking engine must be connected to the web analytics software you have chosen to use, as without this there will be no conversion data. If you’re able to boost your conversion rate by even a few percentage points, then you’re going to notice a huge change in your overall revenue.
Booking and website abandonment Abandonment rate is the most important metric, as it can have direct impact on your revenue and it involves making just a few tiny tweaks to your final checkout process, rather than something more complicated and elaborate. By segmenting your abandonment rate by source and product you can gain new insight into which visitors fail to complete the Hotel booking engine process, which means you can then identify the issues causing clients to leave before completing the action.
