This episode is part two of our look at user behavior and performance on your hotel website. In part 1, we covered the movement of a guest through your site and how they interact with the content. This episode looks at your conversion rate and your overall site performance.
SHOW NOTES:
IN ADDITION TO THE PODCAST WE HAVE A BUNCH OF WHITEPAPERS AND STUDIES YOU CAN DOWNLOAD HERE

SHOW NOTES:
Come see us at:
NAVIGATE CONFERENCE
San Antonio, TX
Mar 2-4
https://www.naviscrm.com/navigate/
 
STAT OF THE WEEK:
53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/

Tracking Conversion Rate Optimization

We touched on some conversion rate optimization in Part 1, but now we’re going to dig in deep to find the friction in your booking process. Identifying where users are leaving your site is extremely important. Also, it’s important to understand the typical page flow and determine if you can get users deeper into the funnel quicker.

Things you should be monitoring:

• Page flow reports
• Exit pages
• A/B testing results
• Form fields
• Booking Engine

Tools for conversion rate optimization

• Google Analytics for page flow and exits
• A/B testing tools like Visual Website Optimizer
• User Testing

What to do with your findings:

• Use page flow to understand typical patterns and determine if you need to add features or remove noise to guide users deeper into the funnel.
• Find the most common exit points. Determine if there are things on those that could be creating friction or doubt that could be driving users away.
• A/B testing tools can be helpful for both of the previous items. You can test adding/removing/relocating things from the page.
• Evaluate your user tests and listen to the feedback to determine if there are patterns that drive people out of your funnel. Address those issues by removing unnecessary form fields, adding social proof to embolden a potential guest, create FOMO through messaging that drives a user into making a decision to book now.

 

Tracking Site Performance

Your site’s performance can drastically affect how users interact with it. If your site is too slow, or too difficult to navigate, users can, and will find another option to book a room. In many cases, hotels with the highest percentage of total bookings lost to OTAs also have very poor site performance.

Things you should be monitoring:

• Are users leaving because of a poor mobile experience?
• Are users leaving because of slow page speed?

Tools for monitoring user experience:

• User testing recordings
• Google mobile-friendliness testing and Google Search Console
  • Here you’ll find issues like Text Too Small To Read, Clickable Elements Too Close Together, Content Wider Than Screen
• Page Speed Insights/GTMetrix
  • These tools will give you a good idea of true load speed with metrics like slow or average FCP (first contentful paint–a measure of how long it takes the page begin to render) and slow or average FID (first input delay–a measure of how long it takes the page to start responding to user actions).
  • They will also point out what’s causing your site to load slowly. These could be things like images that are too large, unminified javascript, etc.

What to do with your findings?

• Determine if your mobile experience is too difficult to navigate and drives users to find sites/apps where they can book easily.
• Determine if slow load speeds are driving users back to search results to find pages that will give them the info they require in a timely manner.

 
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In The Newsaroos:     

• TripAdvisor Cuts Hundreds of Positions as Google competition intensifies:
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-23/tripadvisor-cuts-hundreds-of-jobs-after-google-competition-bites
• Booking.com launches CityBook
  https://www.phocuswire.com/Booking-launches-CityBook-app

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Submit your questions and topic ideas on Twitter to @_travelboom or info@travelboommarketing.com.