Ecommerce Checklist
We would recommend that you review the ten actions below on a weekly basis in order to maintain optimum exposure on the web and the occupancy levels that you want at the rates that you want.
Online Inventory
Make sure you have sufficient inventory allocated for all sales channels, especially on your own website. Remember, your own website is the most cost efficient tool for you to receive reservations from.
Go through the reservation process on some of the key booking sites – your own website, Expedia, Travelocity, EBookers, Booking.com. This list will grow as you begin to get a feel for which sites are important to your business. Use the same stay dates to check consistency between different channels.
You should be checking for
- What inventory is available?
- Rate Parity – are the same rates available on all sites?
- Rates on offer by your competitors
- Promotional offers currently available on these main channels.
Rate Parity
It is crucial to offer rate parity on all sales channels. Your own website should offer the best available deals all the time. Rate parity helps in gaining customer confidence and loyalty and guests will be much more likely to book directly through your own website.
- Check Travelocity, Expedia, EBookers and Booking.com, your own website and brand site. Your site should have the lowest rates. You should offer parallel inventory and rate parity across all channels.
Check Online Competition
It is crucial to check how the hotel compares against its competition on different online channels.
- Check Travelocity, Expedia, EBookers and Booking.com, as well as the Search Engines.
Online and Offline Tracking
Accurate tracking helps in analyzing what is working and what is not working.
Online Tracking
- Use your web logs to track activity that is going on on your own website. Check to see how many unique visitors you are receiving, how many people are coming to your site from search engine referrals, the number of page views recorded, how many clicks you have had on the booking engine page, the page which shows the highest number of people leaving the site at that point. You can then begin to consider and calculate the ROI that your website represents.
- Review reservations received through the booking engine, including booked packages, reservations received at different rate codes, plans, etc.
- Ensure that your site is up to date in respect – for example make sure that the manager’s special offers the best rates, local events taking place haven’t been and gone, any relevant news articles are updated regularly and are not really old and time sensitive offers are taken down once they have passed.
- Develop an email marketing plan – you should include annual campaigns, one off promotions and frequency campaigns in one overall plan so that you have a clear picture of activity throughout the year. Establish your desired outcome and determine what constitutes a successful campaign (this may be things like a certain number of new guests making a booking with you; increasing occupancy over a given period by x%; seeing the number of multiple night stays increase by x%). Review local events and reasons why people are visiting your location and make sure these are factored into your plan so that you can maximise sales that could be generated in relation to this. Create an outline of what you will communicate to guests (previous or potential) and how they will receive your message – will it be a time sensitive offer? Will you include a promotional code so that you can track responses more easily? Will repeat guests get a different deal to new guests? Do you offer a discount, a special rate or an added value incentive (eg free bottle of wine when 2 people dine)? Will it be presented as offer within a newsletter, an eshot which only contains details of a promotion, an ecard from the hotel?
- Track Results of your campaign and look at areas where you could improve things before sending out any further mailings. Once your email marketing plan and campaign are set, analysis and tracking of every campaign are very important – key things that you need to be looking at are click through rates, open rates, bounce back and the number of bookings received as a direct result of your mailing so that you can begin a comprehensive ROI analysis.
Offline Tracking
- Track offline conversions against your online marketing tools such as website, PPC campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc. Phone call tracking helps in knowing who is calling, main feeder markets/surfers for your hotel, call activity, and call conversion data. Call tracking also provides an excellent opportunity to identify what works and what does not work. Caller information can be used as sales leads.
- You can track how many phone calls are generated through your own website, email marketing campaign, etc. on weekly basis. Listen to the calls and see how many phone calls are handled and converted.
- Check the following sites on a weekly basis for online reviews that may have been added about your property: Trip Advisor, Yahoo Travel, Travelocity, Holiday Watchdog, YouTube, and Expedia.
- Check and make sure that all the channels, including travel sites, the hotel site, and brand site all have good quality pictures.
- Research what people are searching for when visiting your area.
- Build special value offers including reasons why people are visiting your area, USP of the property, and things to do.
- On the back of this, in the same way as you have an email marketing campaign, plan an offline marketing schedule and review of results in the same way as described above for your online activities.
Both On- and Off-line:
- Collect Email Addresses of your current and potential customers by creating an opt-in sign up (where visitors are signing up to agree to receive relevant information from you) on your website and by asking for this information on any offline materials that people have to return to you. Divide your database based on the interests of your customers, their booking patterns and other past behaviour, and then customise your messages.
Ensure that Your Online Reputation is Representative of Your Aims
Reputation Management should not be overlooked as increasing numbers of travellers booking over the internet will make a final decision based on the experience of those that have gone before them. Review what your customers are saying about your hotel on sites such as Trip Advisor, Yahoo Travel, Active Hotels, Holiday Watchdog and other opinion sites. It is crucial for you to review what is posted online on a weekly basis and take the opportunity to offer feedback by posting responses to guest reviews. Testimonials are valuable addition to your own website as they will go a long way to reassure guests that they are making the right decision in booking with you. Try to build up a store of feedback that you can use – make sure that you have the guest’s permission to do this beforehand though. Encourage guests to complete an entry in your Visitors Book and begin using this free copy to enhance your marketing campaigns.
Local Link Building
Work on securing relevant links pointing back to your site from other sites on a weekly basis. Qualitative incoming links to your site from local chambers of commerce, attractions, things to do, events and so on help in gaining relevancy and ranking of your site on search engines.
Keeping Your Website Current
Fresh content helps you achieve high conversions and frequent indexing by Search Engines. Extend your best rates and time sensitive offers to increase occupancy during low demand periods. Why not list local events and special rates on the manager’s special.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is one of the most effective tools to communicate with your customers. It is also one of lowest cost marketing tools. See our paper on Effective Email Marketing for more detailed information.
Website Pictures
Pictures are worth a thousand words. Make sure you have good quality pictures uploaded on your website. The hotel should also have the copyrights of all the pictures used on the site.
Enhanced Content
Make sure that your own website, GDS entry and entry on other website all have keyword-rich, enhanced content. Create specials and packages including local attractions and things to do. Packages, specials, and information pages help in converting lookers into bookers.
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