Forum Moderators: DixonJones
Now what I need to find out it's why my bookings are low:
1- Is it because of the recession (I know for a fact that one of the industries hit by the recession it's the travel industry).
or
2- Is because my website needs more tweaking.
My search engine traffic stats for the last month are these:
Pages/Visit: 3.89
Avg. Time on Site: 00:03:59
% New Visits: 68.92%
Bounce Rate: 32.53%
My goal conversion it's 0, because I haven't set it up to get those stats (I don't know how to do it either), I also don't pay for Adwords, and 70% of my visitors come from search engine traffic, the way I control my bookings are by a third party booking agent which gives me daily stats of my bookings.
Can anyone please help me.
Maybe your site doesn't potray trust. Maybe people aren't getting there using "buy" keywords. Maybe it's the recession. Maybe your site doesn't work for everyone. Maybe your site is difficult to navigate. Maybe users don't know what to do. Maybe your calls to action aren't clear. Maybe your booking agent is skimming.
About your comment, that's the reason I redesign my website, to make it better to navigate, to be user friendly, to use the keywords that apply exactly to what I'm selling (even thought they were competitive keywords).
I also was thinking about the trust factor (even thought I already had a TICO logo, which is a travel license, and I also had a trust logo that authenticate my website is secure), so 2 weeks ago I create a customer service page which has a Privacy Policy page, a Terms and Conditions page and a FAQ page, to fix that problem.
About the booking agent skimming me, I don't think that's the case, because my booking agent it's a known booking agent by the travel industry, most Canadian online travel agencies use this booking agent.
I also update my website everyday and I have the cheapest prices in the market and I also have deals of the day specials.
About the part you said maybe my site doesn't work for everyone, what do you exactly mean?
Also since my website it's kind of new for most people (since I get close to 70% of new visitors everyday) what other things can I do to give my visitors trust?
About the part you said maybe my site doesn't work for everyone, what do you exactly mean?
what other things can I do to give my visitors trust?
By the way the last few days I have seen an improvement in bookings, I think the Customer Services pages I built a couple weeks ago has something to do about it, hopefully it keeps up.
Thanks for your comments.
Your bounce rate is decent. Your visits are kind of short - I would expect an average time of 6-7 minutes for what I think your site is about, and more page views. But then I don't really know what you are selling.
Web statistics are really a horrible way to figure out things like this about your site. Sorry, they just are.
If I were you, I would put 4Q on your site and pay a lot of attention to the answers. It's direct contact with visitors that will give you insight. Google on "4Q survey."
I'm not suggesting that you lie about these issues, I'm just saying that you are asking people to drop a lot of money on a web site that most people have likely never heard of before. On top of that you (and I) are in one of the most competitive industries on the net.
If you are sending traffic to be fulfilled by a third party, bounce rate does not have the same meaning then if they must stay on your site to purchase your product. You actually want people to leave your site to go to the site that fulfills the sale.
If you are getting 1,500 unique visitors a day you should be making serious money, are you sure those are uniques and not pageviews? Also, your statement about having the cheapest prices in the market is interesting. How do you know this? Do you do competitive analysis by looking at your competitors EXACT same product?
One final thing, the recession is certainly affecting many people, but if you are getting that much traffic, and have that good pricing, then it can only mean that there is a problem with the functionality and/or design of your site.
The 1,500 visitors daily from last month are unique visitors, which 1000 are from the search engine, the other 500 visitors are usually our regular clients, newsletter visitors, or our travel agents who use the website everyday.
The visitors I'm targeting right now are the ones from the search engine, specially the 60-70% of new visitors I get daily, which it's about 600 to 700 visitors daily.
About the prices, we do get the cheapest prices, because we are used by almost all tour operators (in Canada) as an outlet to sell their unsold inventory at huge discounts prices. We are like RedTag.ca and itravel2000 in that we will match the cheapest prices guaranteed.
By the way, we do get a lot of online bookings, it's just that is not close to the 2% - 3% of the visitors we get daily. So that's where my issue is.
Regarding your general situation - check your search keywords. You may be getting a particularly low conversion from some of them, simply because those keywords don't set the right expectations with those visitors.
The conversion percentage is one thing, but have your overall numbers of conversions gone up since you did this?
The bookings has double since I redesign the website, but still it's not close to the 2% of visitors I get daily.
I'm going to keep tweaking the website, because I just find out yesterday from a complain of one of our clients that the search engine has a small problem when making multiple searches, and I can see that may be a reason we have lost some visitors.
Thanks for your suggestions and I will do the 4Q test as soon as I have time.
I wasn't implying that you were a small agency, rather that your site must look like a large agency, regardless of your size. Trust again is everything in your sector.
As far as GA, you can indeed track goals across multiple domains check this page out on Google's help site [google.com].
This will show you how to track sales if your visitors leave your site and go to a fulfilling site. You can also assign a dollar value to each sale if you want to track that as well.
Note: you will need the cooperation of the other site owner as they will have to install code on their servers that will enable your sales to be tracked.
Check you tracking and find out if you are recording correct bookings, which you should be knowing, if you are really down in bookings despite increase in traffic.
this means you are not driving the right kind of people into the site.
