“If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the new Spruce Point Inn website’s worth a library,” said innkeeper Angelo DiGiulian. “Over this past winter, we have invested in makeovers for our guestrooms, an upgrade of the Main Inn reception area, new poolside and waterfront amenities and the creation of an oceanside deck café – Azure – that will bring a new option for waterfront lunch to Boothbay Harbor. We wanted our online presence to tell that story with the facts and the images that captured what we think the Inn is all about. O’Rourke has caught the timeless feel of a classic Maine summer vacation and the informal warmth of the Inn that keeps bringing people back, generation after generation.”

From spacious guestrooms to cozy Maine cottages, Spruce Point Inn Resort & Spa accommodates romantic getaways, family vacations and special events from weddings to executive retreats with a diverse selection of accommodations, including traditional and contemporary Maine lodges, guestrooms and suites in the historic Main Inn, classic Maine summer cottages and modern townhouses. During the renovations, the innkeepers have addressed the smallest details throughout the property, replacing wall and floor-coverings, adding new bedding, Keurig coffeemakers, plasma screen televisions and Green Natura bath products. Different color palettes accent the seaside cottage style or contemporary warmth of the furnishings. Each guestroom also now features photographs from the Inn’s storied past, including famous guests from astronaut John Glenn to the Kennedys as well as snapshots from the diningroom, dock and waterfront.

About Spruce Point Inn
In operation for more than 100 years, Spruce Point Inn is a distinctive and historic vacation destination for travelers from all over the United States. Its relaxing facilities have long been a part of the summer community and a backdrop for delightful “oceanside memories made in Maine.” Located in the seafaring village of Boothbay Harbor, Maine (an hour north of Portland) and situated on 57 acres of stunning oceanfront and sheltering pine forest, the Inn is a retreat of 56 modern rooms in eight lodges, 16 classic cottages and rooms, 9 historic inn rooms and 4 townhomes. The convenient location, peaceful setting and spectacular coastal views have made the Inn a premier resort for families, reunions, weddings and business events. For reservations, call 800-553-0289 or visit http://www.sprucepointinn.com.

Online video viewership continues to grow exponentially, but it doesn’t stop there – mobile video viewing is also expected to increase. According to eMarketer, the population of mobile video viewers in the US will grow nearly 30% in 2010 to reach 23.9 million, they predict it is poised to double by 2013. More viewers means more opportunity for revenue and eMarketer predicts that mobile video revenues, including direct downloads, subscriptions and ad-supported video, will roughly triple between 2009 and 2014, rising from $436 million to $1.34 billion.

There is no better time than the present to get in on the action, so grab a digital camera and hit record. As a hotelier, what video content appeals to users, travelers and potential guests and how do you create it? We’ve put together a few ideas to get you started.

The Tools

Camera

The cost of video equipment used to be one of the biggest hurdles to creating video content yourself. Now, with the advance of technology, you can be a budding film maker for under $200. Check out the various models of the Flip Cam or Kodak’s HD pocket camera line.

Platform

No way to put the videos on your site? No problem – link to them. It takes minutes to start up a YouTube Channel and don’t count out social media channels. Facebook is a great place to share helpful videos with your fan base.

The Script

Keep your content casual and make sure what you film is a resource to viewers. Think about subjects that travelers would be interested in.

No one really wants to watch a video of your bar opening party (unless there are celebrities present) but they’d love to watch your expert mixologists walk them through how to make the most popular cocktail. This way you highlight your staff, service and product while still providing guests with useful information.

Some other ideas are to have your Concierge walk through the neighborhood and point out his or her picks for the best places to go and see. Or, film your housekeeping staff with their best tips for packing and where to look before you leave to avoid a trip to lost and found.

Check out how the Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago used video to promote their fitness center with a Special Pumpkin Workout during the month of October. They also posted their video on their Smartstay mobile phone application for the iPhone and Android. Video is very popular with smartphone users and hotels can easily post their videos on the Smartstay app for their guests to enjoy.

The Campaign

Really want to attract mobile or traditional online viewers? Create an entire campaign around an idea. Pick a weekend or two to post special rates and hand out a few flip cams to lucky guests. Ask them to film their stay (this is a big hit with families with teens) for a chance to win a free trip with all the bells and whistles. Post all of the submitted videos to your Facebook page and have fans vote for the best trip video. You can also post the videos on your mobile app. And, don’t forget to film the winner when they arrive for their VIP treatment to bring it all full circle!

For more information about Online Hotel Marketing or the Smartstay mobile app for hotels, please call O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com.

Understanding why users abandon a transaction is the first step to removing the obstacles that can deter them.  According to a January 2010 survey of US online travel bookers by PhoCus Wright, while too-high prices were the main driver to booking abandonment, the remainder of complaints revolved around site functionality. In addition, online travel bookers also stated that these factors impacted return visits and ultimately drove them to book on competitors’ sites.

The list of complaints is lengthy, but there are some quick and inexpensive ways to alleviate user discomfort and build online loyalty in the process.

1. Be Up Front

While you may not be able to reduce rates low enough to accommodate all travelers, you can still address users’ number one gripe by ensuring that the rates you are advertising are actually available on your site and that you have included or disclosed any additional fees and taxes in your banner ads, promotions and emails. This one simple step will pre-qualify visitors to the site, funnel only those ready to buy at the rate you have listed, eliminate user frustration, and build trust in your target market.

2. Optimize Your Advertising Landing Pages

A landing page is the page on your site where users “land” after clicking through a piece of online advertising. By taking users from an ad to an ad-specific landing page that has coordinating messaging, imagery and promotional offers you instantly reassure them that they are in the right place. To optimize these pages even further, stick to one offer per landing page, lead with the offer and simply bullet out the details. Lastly, include one large and hard to miss call to action – Book Today!

3. Eliminate Pre-Booking Registration

With the constant push to gathering more and more guest information it can be easy to lose track of the number one goal of most hotel sites – drive online bookings. To get back on track, remember that less is more. The faster you can funnel the user to that “Book Now” button the better. Still want to capture some user contact info? You can always include an option to set up an account on the reservation confirmation page after they have booked their stay. Explaining the benefits of creating an account will also increase submissions.

4. Consider Showing Users Availability

Hotels can’t have a room for everyone, but hotel sites can show the dates they do have available and the calendar is a great tool for accomplishing that. By showing availability in this manner, users can see what time frames they have to work with. If your system kicks back the “No Availability” message if there is one day of conflict in the request – even when the other three days are available – it is time to re-evaluate. You will be missing out on travelers who could alter their stay by a day on either end and nothing sends a user surfing to competitor sites faster than constantly receiving the “No Availability” message.

5. Streamline Your Online Content

Hotel sites can be a dumping ground for everyone in the organization who would rather not field questions or deal with travelers one on one, but if you have communicated that the number one goal of the site is to drive online reservations it isn’t hard to cut out the content that is just clutter. Review your content and in every turn ask your team, “Does this content support our goal?” or “Will this info help a user make it to that “Book Now” page?” Use this technique when there is a request to add content as well. The content that you have left will be clearer and more concise to online travel bookers, leading to less confusion and a speedier completed transaction.

Having a hard time identifying what content is important to users and what isn’t? Take a look at your site statistics and see what pages users are leaving your site from and what pages or funnels lead to a booking. If you don’t have access to site analytics, take a read through your recent online reviews and let your previous guests call out what really made their stay memorable, chances are other guests will be drawn to those same points and that is the content you should lead with.

If you would like to learn more about Hotel Website Design and Optimization please call O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing at 978-465-5955 or send an email to info@orourkehospitality.com.

Dan Siroker, former deputy New Media Director of the Obama Presidential Transition, gave a keynote presentation at SES Chicago in December about how he and his team used Data to win the Obama presidential election, and the lessons they learned along the way. Your hotel can learn from these lessons and apply them in your own internet marketing campaign.

Before joining the campaign, Siroker was a product manager for Google Chrome. He saw Obama speak at a visit to Google¹ and he was inspired to help him with the new media aspect of his campaign. Two weeks later, Dan moved to Chicago for a month where he did whatever he could to help the campaign. He then officially joined the campaign as the director of analytics.

Dan showed us how the campaign structure worked with Barack Obama on the top tier, followed by David Plouffe, the campaign manager, and then the departments of correspondence, field, policy, operations, communications, new media, paid media, and finance. New media was then divided into marketing, e-mail, blog, analytics, design, video and organizing.

Before going into the details of the campaign, Siroker reminded us that Obama won with 365 electoral votes as opposed to 173 electoral votes for McCain. In the popular vote Obama had 53% percent of votes (69,456,897), and McCain had 46% of votes (59,934,814).

As we all saw, the Obama new media campaign triumphed over McCain’s. Below is a screenshot of one of Dan’s slides which reveals the drastic difference in the number of Facebook friends, YouTube video views, and unique website visitors that the Obama campaign attracted as opposed to the McCain campaign.

Through their online efforts, the Obama team dramatically surpassed the McCain team in terms of money raised. The Obama team raised a total of $656 million and $500 million of that came from their online campaign as seen in the slide below.

The online marketing campaign was unprecedented in any other presidential election. You have probably read articles and seen interviews about the innovative process and the talent of the people involved. Barack Obama wrote about it himself in his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.’ Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, also recently wrote a memoir about the campaign titled, ‘The Audacity to Win.’

Dan Siroker helped mastermind the online efforts and we were eager to hear what he had to say about the campaign. Below is a re-cap of the lessons they learned, and our thoughts on how your hotel can benefit from those lessons.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: Define Success

Or rather, Define Quantifiable Success Metrics. Obviously the main goal for the Obama team was for Obama to win the election. For the team managing the online campaign they defined it this way: website > email signup > raise money. They could measure the success by cost-per-click, sign up rate and money per recipient.

What is the definition of success for your hotel’s online efforts? Most likely it is to increase bookings and revenue. Have you set specific goals for your internet marketing campaign? Are you measuring the success of your campaign?  Success can also consist of increasing your online presence, building a brand voice, capturing e-mail addresses, managing your online reputation, or building relationships with your audience through social media.

Lesson #2: Question Assumptions

Dan never just followed assumptions that their online material would be effective in achieving their goal of gaining supporters and raising money. Instead he and his team tested different layouts of the material and used the data to determine what elements motivated people to take action.

As an example, Dan showed us how his team used testing on a splash page they created to encourage people to sign up for the e-mail list. They did not just create a page that thought would be effective, rather they created different versions and used multivariate testing through Google Optimizer to test which button and image proved most effective in getting people to sign up. They tested four different buttons, Sign up, Learn More, Join Us Now, and Sign Up Now. They also tested 3 images and 3 videos.

Before Dan showed us the splash page that was most effective, he tested us to prove his point that assumptions are often wrong. He showed us the variations of the splash page and asked us what we thought would work the best. In the end only 2 people in the audience had assumed correctly. Below is the image of the winning splash page which was most compelling in encouraging visitors to sign up.

The new layout resulted in an increase in conversions from 8.2% to 11.6%, which is an observed improvement of 40%. This means that they went from 1000 conversions to 1500 conversions. Dan explained that it may not seem like much presented that way, but through the life of the campaign it would translate into 4 million more people that signed up.

Does your hotel make decisions based on assumptions about what will appeal to your audience, or do you test to see which layouts of your online material are most effective? You should test everything from website pages, landing pages, e-mail campaigns, and PPC ads. You can also test landing pages for free with Google Optimizer.² Testing helped the Obama team increase conversions, and it can also help your hotel increase bookings.

Lesson #3: Divide and Conquer

Another lesson the team learned is that different elements appeal to different users. This became clear when the team attempted to test a donate button.  The variables included, Donate Now, Please Donate, Why Donate? Donate and Get a Gift, or Contribute. Again Dan conducted a quick test with the conference audience to see what we thought would be most effective. Again, we were wrong.

This time it turned out that there was not just one correct answer because it depended on who you were as a visitor. Through testing they discovered that people who had never signed up before favored the ‘Donate & Get A Gift,’ those who had signed up but didn’t donate preferred the ‘Please Donate’ button, and those who previously donated preferred the ‘Contribute’ button, as seen in the slide below.

Your hotel can also divide and conquer. You must profile your guests which will allow you to send very targeted messaging to individuals. Learn about your guests and record if they are at your hotel for leisure, a wedding, a meeting, or business. Note their interests. Did they use the fitness center or visit the spa? Did they dine at the restaurant or do they prefer room service? It is also important to segment your guests into new guests, return guests or regular guests. Once you have this information you can create e-mail campaigns that will appeal to the individual guest. Again, test your landing pages and e-mail campaigns to learn which combination of design elements will be most effective in encouraging conversions.

Lesson 4: Take Advantage of Circumstances

Dan stressed the importance of taking advantage of circumstances. He gave us an example of a time when Sara Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. David Plouffe and his team then sent out letters to their supporters explaining the situation and asked them to make a donation. This e-mail resulted in 10 million dollars within 24 hours! Below is a screenshot of the letter.

Is your hotel taking advantage of circumstances? Circumstances can include everything from the weather, the economy, holidays, school vacations, your competition, to conferences or special events in your town. Listen in social media to find out what people are saying about your hotel, or your town, or upcoming events. You can use Twitter search or Tweetbeep to listen in. If you see that someone may be looking for a hotel in your city, respond to them. Take advantage of circumstances and you can greatly increase bookings.

Lesson 5: Turn Your Customers Into Evangelists

Dan said they turned their supporters into evangelists everyday through their blog and YouTube channels. Here they focused more on the supporters rather than the candidate. He feels that other campaigns missed the boat here.

For example, the Obama team created videos that motivated others to get involved. One such video, Charles Meets Barack³, focused on one of the volunteers who won a raffle to meet Barack. This video was released only 28 days before the election but generated over ½ million YouTube views. The video also received a lot of press coverage because of the process story of social media transforming politics. Social media made it easy for supporters to share content and recruit new supporters.

Do you have evangelists for your hotel? You probably do have regular guests who recommend your hotel to their friends and family. Encourage them to share your offers and content by placing Share With Your Network icons on your e-mail campaigns. These icons can link to Facebook and Twitter and make it very easy for them to pass your message on to their own contacts. Find out who your evangelists are and encourage them to write a review of your hotel. Encourage guests to create their own photos and videos about your hotel. Again, listen in on social media to learn what people are saying about your hotel and create new relationships that could result in new evangelists.

Create Evangalists for your hotel with Spreadly

Dan took the idea of social media and combined it with affiliate marketing to create a new program called Spreadly⁴.  Spreadly is a social affiliate marketing program any online merchant can use to turn their customers into evangelists. The idea behind Spreadly is that a business can help support a cause and the cause is the reason why people start talking about the business.

Spreadly provides users with a widget that they can place on their purchase confirmation page. Customers can then choose a cause they are interested in and Spreadly creates a referral link where users can easily share the information through Twitter, Facebook, or E-Mail. Your company vows to pay $5 (or amount agreed) for every purchase that their friend makes. If you are interested in using this program you can request an early partner account on the site www.spreadly.com.

In closing, below is a quick re-cap of the Lessons Learned From the Obama Campaign:

Lesson #1: Define Success

Lesson #2: Question Assumptions

Lesson #3: Divide and Conquer

Lesson #4: Take Advantage of Circumstances

Lesson #5: Turn Your Customers Into Evangelists

Try some of these tactics in 2010. If they were effective enough to help win the presidential election there is a high probability they can help your hotel increase bookings.

If you would like to learn more about how Internet Marketing can help your hotel, please call us at 978-465-5955 or write an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.

* Slides courtesy of Dan Siroker

1 Candidates@Google: Barack Obama Video

2 Google Website Optimizer

3 Charles meets Barack

4 Spreadly

It’s been two months since Google introduced Sidewiki on September 23, but it hasn’t really caught fire . . . yet. When it was first announced, there was a lot of buzz on blogs and news sites, and it felt that the internet would be taken over by user-generated comments and opinions, but so far it hasn’t gained that much traction. We believe it will catch on soon, and that your hotel should be prepared for when it does.

What is Google Sidewiki and will it go mainstream?

Sidewiki is part of a Google Toolbar browser plug-in that allows users to open a sidebar on any website they are visiting and comment freely on anything they like; the website, the content, how they feel about the topic or the brand, or what they had for breakfast. These comments can then be seen by other visitors to the site (provided they have downloaded the Sidewiki toolbar) and they can leave comments as well. Users can also add links and videos, and share their comments through E-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Will Google Sidewiki go mainstream?  We cannot predict the future, but given the success of other user-generated sites such as Trip Advisor, Yelp, You Tube and Wikipedia, we have reason to believe that it may.  As it is now, users have to sign up for a Google account and install the Google Toolbar to be able to see and write comments, and many people simply don’t know it exists.

However, Google has made an API available, which means that third party developers can access Sidewiki data and integrate it into their own applications or on their websites. Surely some tool will be developed soon that will catch the public eye and bring Sidewiki into the limelight.

People aren’t quite sure how to use Google Sidewiki yet, or what kind of comments they should be leaving. Really it all depends on the purpose and content of the website. Google recently wrote a blog post reviewing the first 50 days of Sidewiki, and shared 10 examples of ways users have written comments that will benefit others who visit the same site. For example Jason Young gave his own tips on how to tune a bass guitar on a guitar website, Matt Cutts from Google warned visitors about a deceptive website that claimed that Google is hiring people to work at home, and Jesse Poe added his personal reviews to a review of an iPhone application.

In a perfect world, the idea is great! If users can supply informative, relevant, quality comments that add knowledge and insight to the website content then that’s fantastic. We believe there will be some quality commentaries with useful information. People like to share their knowledge, or experience, on a topic they feel passionate about. We can just look at Wikipedia to see that.

However we don’t live in a perfect world and many companies see Google Sidewiki as a reputation management nightmare that will open up a new channel for malicious comments and reviews, or just create nonsense clutter. It could also be used by spammers. The companies and website owners have no control whatsoever over the comments. They do not have the right to approve or delete comments, as they can with blog comments, so they are really defenseless in a sense.

We also feel the temptation is too high and it’s too easy to write. Anyone could write anything just to be heard or to vent. What’s to stop people from airing dirty laundry, or bringing up personal information? I read one comment from a woman who owned a company and was concerned that as soon as her ex-boyfriend learns about Sidewiki he will surely try to bring her company down with his comments.

What about jaded employees, competitors? Sure they can write negative things about you on external sites but these will not likely be seen by the masses. To me, it is similar to a heckler during a speech. Who is to stop the Joe Wilsons of the world yelling ‘You Lie!’ everywhere.

Google is trying to control this, and has set up a voting system that allows users to vote if a comment is useful or not. There is also an option to report abuse where users can report a policy violation such as spam, illegal content, or any post that advocates hate or violence.

Google Sidewiki also has an algorithm in place that will put the highest quality, most relevant entries first, taking into account the votes, previous entries by author, and relevance to page.

Can I block Google Sidewiki?

There is currently no opt-out option for Google Sidewiki, but given all the controversy it has caused I would not be surprised if Google considers adding the option in the future.

Many companies have found ways to block Sidewiki, and they are selling their script. Google has actually found a way around some of these sidewiki blockers.

Some companies have even modified their server settings to block any user who even has the Google toolbar installed. This is probably not the best idea if you have a commercial website.

Other companies have elected to redirect visitors to a secure page. So when visitors type in http://www.yourhotel.com they would get redirected to an https site with the same name. Sidewiki cannot run on the secure site.

Less extreme, some third party developers have created tools that can block spam from the sidewiki.

How will Google Sidewiki affect my Hotel?

In regards to hotel websites, we believe users will begin to leave reviews of the hotel right on Google Sidewiki. This should not scare hotels, as they have been dealing with user-generated reviews for years on popular sites such as TripAdvisor and Expedia. The main difference is that these reviews will be closer to home, and visitors will be able to see reviews without navigating away from your site.

As is the case with other review sites, Google sidewiki could be an asset to your hotel or detrimental, depending on the types of reviews your hotel receives. And as we discussed in a previous post about TripAdvisor, negative reviews can actually be helpful at times.

Let’s look at the positives, the negatives, and how your hotel should manage these reviews.

The Positives

• Good reviews will encourage visitors on your site to make a reservation

• You will be able to respond to these reviews unlike some of the external review sites

• Visitors who read the reviews won’t be distracted by ads from your competitors

•  Sidewiki content can rank in the Search Engines, which can drive more traffic to your site

• Visitors who comment on your site can also share their comments through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook which can also rank in the Search Engines and contribute to your web presence

The Negatives

• Similar to any review sites there is an opportunity for a guest to leave a negative or unfair review which you will be unable to remove

• It is just one more place you must monitor every day

• Comments may be too general or unstructured. On a standard review site there are different areas that the guest has to review such as cleanliness or service. Sometimes a guest will give a top rating to one area and a lower rating to another, which will often balance it out. On sidewiki, a guest may just mention what they didn’t like. There may also be reviews mixed in with other comments or perhaps even questions.

• Some review sites require proof that a guest has stayed at your hotel before they can write a review. This is not controlled with Google Sidewiki.

• Some review sites threaten to blacklist competitors if they are found out writing false negative comments about your hotel. Again this is not controlled with Google Sidewiki.

• On the flip side some review sites threaten to blacklist companies that write positive reviews about their own company. What is in place to stop you from enlisting people to write positive comments on your site, or voting on all the positive comments? Your competitors could be doing the same on their sites. Users may begin to distrust the comments altogether.

• Who is to stop a competitor from writing a comment on your site trying to lure visitors away with their own offer?

What We Recommend Your Hotel Do

• First of all install Google Sidewiki. It’s free and it only takes a couple of seconds. You must have the latest Internet Explorer or Firefox. For Google Chrome and other browsers you can use the sidewiki bookmarklet.

• Experiment using Google Sidewiki. Once installed, you will see a blue box with arrows on the top left of the page. Click on this to open the sidewiki bar to see any comments. There is a ‘Write an entry’ option at the bottom of the bar which will allow you to write your own comment. Below is an example of sidewiki written on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. The commenter highlighted the content on the website he was adding to.

• Look at other examples of comments. As Sidewiki is still new there are not a lot of websites that have comments yet. You can see a list of 10 examples from a recent Google Blog post. You can tell if posts have been written on a page or not by the color of the sidewiki icon in your toolbar. If the icon is yellow there are posts about that webpage. If it is white with a pencil image no posts have been written.

• Take ownership of Sidewiki by being the first to comment on your own site, and set the tone for future comments. Google allows the website owner to write a comment that will always appear first at the top of the Sidewiki page, and it will be highlighted in a green box. To do this follow the instructions in this webmaster sidewiki post.

• Monitor comments on your site as you would any review site. You most likely do not have any comments yet as Sidewiki is still new, however you need to be on the lookout for comments in case they do come in. You aren’t alerted when there are comments, however Google has introduced an API feature where you can subscribe to have comments sent to you on your site, or any website, via an RSS feed. A third party developer vedovini.net has already created a site which makes this easier. http://www.sidewikirss.com/ You just need to enter in the URL of the website and it will give you a feed to subscribe to. You can then see when new comments are written.

You subscribe to sidewiki comments the same way you would for any RSS feed. I subscribe with my iGoogle. As an example, I subscribed the Mayo clinic sidewiki comments seen below. If you would like to learn more about how to set up an RSS feed we have described it in detail in our post on how to subscribe to blogs.

• Think about setting up your own system on your website for guests to enter reviews. This could be more structured and allow them to comment on all aspects of your hotel, not just freely write anything.

In conclusion, what will happen with Google Sidewiki is a bit of a mystery at the moment. There have been other attempts from other companies to let people annotate websites which never caught on. However, those other companies were not Google.

There are many positives and negatives to Google Sidewiki, and a lot of controversy.

Most companies do not like the idea of giving up control of what is seen on their website. However, the public likes to read ‘real’ comments and reviews of products and services, and that isn’t going to change. Perhaps Google Sidewiki will catch on, perhaps it won’t. Either way, Google Sidewiki is here right now, with no opt-out, and it is up to your hotel to start monitoring your comments.

If you would like more information about Google Sidewiki please feel free to call us at 978-465-5955 or write to us at info@orourkehospitality.com.

We would like to hear your opinion on Google Sidewiki. Have you tried it? Do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea? Please feel free to respond below:

If you have analytics installed on your website then you have access to this information. However, our research this month revealed that 41.8% of New England first class and luxury hotels don’t have analytics installed on their website!

What is Analytics Software?

Analytics software is a tool that gathers information about how people find your site, how they navigate through it, and how they become customers. You embed a JavaScript code into your web pages which will collect data from your users. You will then be able to view and analyze a great deal of data including how people entered your site (i.e. a banner ad, an article, or the search engines), what pages they visited, how long they spent on your site, what pages they exited on, what percentage of people left your site quickly (bounce rate), what content and keywords are most successful, and much more.

There are many software packages available, but the most popular are Google Analytics, Webtrends, and Omniture. Google Analytics is a very effective software that covers all the basics of tracking, and it is completely free. Omniture and Webtrends are paid software which will allow the user to delve deeper into the analytics and are best for very large e-commerce sites.

We recommend hotels use Google Analytics because it is a quality software that will provide you with a high-level of data at no cost. If your hotel brand has hundreds of properties, or a large complex website, you may consider paying for Omniture or Webtrends, however those sites may be overkill for most properties.  For purposes of this article we will focus on Google Analytics.

Why Does My Hotel Need Analytics?

If you aren’t tracking your website and internet marketing efforts you will never know if they are effective or what your return on investment is. You should decide what to track, set goals, and create reports that show how results tie back to goals. Below is an outline of why your hotel should use analytics:

• Analytics can help your hotel detect problems with your website

Tracking allows you to analyze user behavior on your site which will help you identify if there are any problems on your site that need to be fixed. Analytics will tell you what the most popular pages on your site are, the average time users spend on each page, the pages a user visited before and after, and where the user exited your site. It will also show you the bounce rate which is the percentage of people who entered your site but left immediately without looking at other pages or links. If you analyze this data you can learn a lot about the content of your website and what works and what doesn’t.

If a user is on your site and proceeds to the reservations page, but then exits before booking, perhaps there is a problem with the reservations page. Maybe it is too difficult to use, or there is a trust issue, or the user was distracted by a link. If a certain page has a high bounce rate, or exit rate, you should also analyze the content on that page. Ideally you want users to exit only after they have booked or made some other conversion such as providing you with their e-mail or downloading a PDF.

Make sure your booking engines can integrate Google Analytics. Some booking engines have their own tracking system which can help hotels see conversions from PPC ads and other sources. However these systems may not allow you to track what users are doing on your site, or where they are clicking. Therefore you aren’t able to detect potential problems with your website.

On a technical note, you can also see what type of computers and web browsers your visitors are using and test to see if your site functions correctly within those browsers.

• Analytics will show your hotel how people are directed to your website

If you aren’t tracking your internet marketing efforts such as your search engine optimization strategy, PPC campaign, banner ads, e-mail campaigns, or press releases/articles, then you will never know if they were effective. Google Analytics will show you exactly where your traffic came from. You can see the percentage of direct traffic (when the user directly types in your URL), traffic from referring sites (links from articles, social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and traffic from the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

You can also link Google Analytics to your AdWords account to track your PPC campaigns. Once linked, Analytics will automatically tag your AdWord links for detailed campaign tracking reports. You must manually ‘tag your links’ on all your banner ads, e-mail campaigns, and newsletters so they can be tracked by Analytics. You can learn how to do this on the Google Analytics help page. You do not have to tag links from referral sites because Google Analytics can detect the site automatically.

• Analytics will help your hotel learn about its audience

The visitors reports can show you what countries and cities your users are from, and the languages they speak. This can help you identify where your target audience is, and help you make decisions on your campaigns. Perhaps you have a lot of visitors from local areas, but not enough nationally. Therefore you may decide to do a national campaign. If you see there is a high percentage of Spanish speakers looking at your site, you may want to make want to make your site available in the Spanish language.

• Analytics will tell you which keywords are most effective

The  keywords report will show you overall trends regarding your keywords. You can see which keywords drive the most traffic to your site, and more importantly, which keywords direct users to your site who then make a conversion (take an action you have specified in your goals, such as make a reservation, download information, or submit e-mail). It is important to look at the words that lead to the highest conversion rates as opposed to the ones that drive the most traffic. You should also look at the words that have the highest bounce rate, perhaps users find your site is not relevant to that word.

How do I use Google Analytics?

Google Analytics was designed for specialists and non-specialists to be able to track and analyze the reports. However, as with anything new, it takes a little practice and you need to familiarize yourself with the software. Below we have outlined some steps that will help you get started:

Step One: Set Up a Google Analytics Account for your Hotel

Go to Google.com/analytics and select the blue button on the right that says Access Analytics.

Enter in the URL of your website, account name, country, and time zone. Google will then supply you with a code which is about 4-5 lines of javascript. You need to copy this code and place it in the footer of every page on your website. You may need to ask your web developer to help you with this, or if you want to attempt it yourself you can follow the instructions on the Google Analytics help page, or watch an instructional video on YouTube.

Step Two: Define Goals for Hotel Website

A goal, or conversion, is an action you want the user to take on your website. It can be an e-mail sign-up, an article download, or a reservation. You can also set up an optional sales funnel with up to ten pages. A funnel path is a series of pages which the visitor is expected to pass through before reaching a conversion goal. The funnel could help you see exactly where visitors drop off before making a conversion.

Every set of goals in a Google Analytics profile allows you to create up to 5 goals. You can have four sets, so that’s a total of 20 goals.

Goals & funnels will help you see if your website is performing in line with your business objectives. You will be able to make more informed marketing decisions once you see which campaign or referral brought visitors who made conversions, where the visitors live, and what keywords were most effective in attracting these visitors.

For detailed instructions on how to set up goals and sales funnels see How to Setup Goals in Google Analytics or the Google Analytics help page.

Step Three: Read Analytics Reports

Now that you have taken the time to install Google Analytics and establish goals, you must become familiar with reading and analyzing the reports. Avinash Kaushik, author of the recently published book, ‘Web Analytics 2.0,’ and the best-selling book ‘Web Analytics an Hour A Day,’ came up with a 90 – 10 rule. He says you should spend 90% of your budget on people to analyze data and 10% of your budget on the actual tool you are using.

There are over 80 reports you can customize in Google Analytics, and you can also create your own. You can group all the reports that you like together on one dashboard which you can also e-mail to others. You can also send individual reports and schedule the days and frequency you would like them to be sent out.

Whether you will assign someone at the hotel to produce the reports, or have a third party send them to you, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the dashboard and the reports available. The best way is just to log into your analytics and see what’s available.

Below we have outlined the basic reports you should view on your dashboard:

Traffic Overview/Site Usage

The Traffic Overview shows you:
• the number of visits to your site
• how many pages were viewed
• the average number of pages viewed during each visit
• the bounce rate (when a user looked at your site but exited without looking at any other pages or clicking on anything)
• the average time visitors spent on your site
• the percentage of new visitors to your site

Visitors Overview

The Visitors Overview is similar to the traffic overview but also allows you to see:
• the number of unique visitors (A unique visitor is one person. A ‘unique visitor’ is different than ‘visits’ because one person could have visited your site 5 times.)
• You can also see the Visitors Segmentation on the right hand side which allows you to see the languages of your visitors, as well as a profile of their browsers and operating systems.

Traffic Sources Overview

The Traffic Overview shows you where your traffic is coming from:
• percentage of direct traffic (users who typed your URL directly into their browsers)
• percentage of referring sites (those who clicked to your site from another site)
• percentage of traffic from search engines results pages (either organic or paid)
• the traffic sources can also show you which keywords drive traffic to your website and which ones are most effective in making conversions. You should also look at the keywords that have a high bounce rate and see if they are relevant to your site.

Content Overview

The content overview will show you how users interact with your site. You can see the following:
• the top content tab will show you which pages are most popular
• top entry pages
• exit pages (where people left your site)
• bounce rate of each page
• average time spent on each page
• on the right hand side you can click on the Navigation Summary to see how people click through your website.
• the site overlay button takes a picture of your page and can show you what people click on.

Step Four: Analyze Analytics Reports

It is one thing to ask what happened, but another thing to ask why it happened. These Analytics reports can show you how many people came to your site, how they found your site, what actions they took on your site, how long they stayed etc., but you are the one who has to interpret this information to find out what is effective and what isn’t.

Once you understand the data, see if your site is living up to the goals you established. Are visitors making the desired conversions? If not, compare your ideal sales funnel to what is actually happening on your site, and see where you may be losing people.

Analyze your traffic sources to see which campaigns are working, and where you need to improve. Perhaps you need to boost your SEO efforts to get more traffic from the search engines, or maybe your banner ad isn’t performing well.

Also remember that the analytics numbers are trends. Expect to see the numbers rise and fall. Gather the information, analyze it, and focus on what you can do to improve your site and internet marketing strategies. As Avinash Kaushik said in a recent post about Analytics, “It’s all about Outcomes baby!” He goes on to say that there are only three types of outcomes any website delivers and they are: increase revenue, reduce cost, and improve customer loyalty/satisfaction. Tracking and analyzing your website and internet marketing efforts with analytics software will help you achieve these outcomes.

Would you like to learn more?

We hope you have found this information useful. As you can see, reading and analyzing Analytics is a very important factor in the success of your hotel website and internet marketing campaign. We have discussed the basics of what analytics is, how to install it, and how to read basic reports, but there are many more features and reports you can explore. If you would like to learn more, we recommend you visit some of these sites:

Google Analytics Education Page

• access a free online course that offers comprehensive training in analytics.

• access Google Analytics videos

Google Analytics Help Center

Google Analytics Blog

Getting Started Guide

Please feel free to contact us at 978-465-5955 or send us an e-mail at info@orourkehospitality if you would like more information about how Google Analytics can help your hotel website

We believe it is time to reinvent the standard hotel website, and we will begin with a quick comparison of a typical hotel website today, and our ideas of how a website should be for 2010.

A Typical Hotel Website Today:

• designed to promote hotel with emphasis on beautiful photos
• difficult to navigate, too many options, user gets lost
• static, no fresh content supplied
• designed from a template
• no links to social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook
• no blog
• no video
• no division between types of travelers (i.e. leisure, business)
• no calls-to-action
• no incentive for user to supply e-mail
• no reason for user to visit your site again
• no personal profiling
• no personal communication with guest
• no reviews
• not optimized for the search engines
• no analytics in place

A Modern Hotel Website for 2010

• designed for the user with emphasis on supplying the information they need
• easy to navigate with no clutter
• dynamic with continually updated content
• created on a content management system that allows hotel to edit content themselves
• links to Twitter and Facebook (or place Twitter stream directly on site)
• a blog to supply useful content to users and help SEO efforts
• videos of hotel and city – videos should be authentic and not glitzy ads
• information should be organized by type of traveler and answer specific questions
• calls-to-action should lead user through the sales funnel
• offer an incentive for users to supply their e-mail (i.e. a downloadable city guide)
• give users a reason to re-visit your site (i.e. ski conditions if your hotel is in the mountains)
• maintain a database of your clients and learn their preferences. This allows for more targeted email campaigns, and a better guest experience at your hotel
• communicate with your guest before, during, and after their stay through email or Twitter
• request reviews from your guests and post them on your website
• make sure your website is optimized for the search engines
• install analytics which will allow you to track user behavior

Your website is at the center of all your internet marketing strategies, and it must be well-designed to provide the guest a positive user experience. If it is ineffective, then all your internet marketing efforts will be in vain. You could be losing guests because of a difficult navigation or reservations page. In today’s market, digital media is growing rapidly and you must grow with it.

We recently attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston created by Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs. Chris is also the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, ‘Trust Agents,’ with Julien Smith. He is a social media guru and his blog is in the top 10 of the Advertising Age Power150. Chris travels a lot and he sees great opportunities for the hotel industry in social media and online marketing.

Tom O’Rourke founder/CEO of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing wanted to share Brogan’s insight with the Hospitality Industry in the second part of this video interview. Tom asked Brogan his view on the current hotel website design and navigation structure.

“Don’t make me hate!” was Chris Brogan’s first response to Tom’s question about his view was on the current hotel website design.  He supports our opinion that hotel websites are utterly backwards of what the guests really want. Chris elaborates:

It’s basically these beautiful majestic pictures. No matter how horrible your hotel is, it’s the best possible picture of your venue. It’s great to have pictures, it’s nice to see the layout of the rooms, but take it backwards from the buyer’s experience, because ultimately I’m the buyer.

I have a really strange set of questions when I’m traveling as a dad, or when I’m traveling as a business guy. As a dad I want to know; What’s the biggest room? Can I get a suite? Can I have door-to-door? Basics.

If I’m a business traveler I want to know what the desk is like. What chair do I have? Are there 5 plugs for my stuff? Do you give me free Wi-Fi or should I worry about bringing my card? How late is your business center open?

So what I’m saying when I say all this is that site design now needs to be a bit more dynamic, and it needs to route me through because right now there’s these crazy navigation trees that cascade like rain and have 500 possible ways to go somewhere.

This is not how we buy anything. We don’t buy groceries that way, we don’t buy anything like this – but for some reason hotels think if I offer you 147 things to click on, you might click one.

Tom agrees with Chris that hotel websites should go in a new direction, and he takes it a step further by suggesting that they incorporate social media and interactivity within their website to stay with the guest before, during, and after their stay. Tom believes it would be a different approach for the hotel business, but that it would be giving the guest what the guest really wants.

Chris agrees with Tom and adds some of his ideas:

I concur. Would you like to make seven figures on a business I just don’t have time to start? Here’s my idea, concierge service – it’s not that person at that desk. That’s part of it, but I would like to have someone I could pay an extra $29 dollars a day to keep all of my things in alignment, and tell me the local ‘Staples’ is here, the ‘Target’ is here, do you need me to run out and get you pens and markers? It’s here. I’d pay $29 dollars a day just to know that person was there.

There are so many things we could do. I’m in Manhattan – I’m on 4^th Avenue, I have no idea where I need to eat, and if they ping me right back on Twitter, because I’m a guest, that’s all I have to do, is maintain a little guest registry – they don’t even have to work hard – I can message them, and they can message me back.

There are so many opportunities for hotels to do so much more with these new tools that don’t cost much to launch. They cost time, and they cost a little consideration, and to not do it the way you’ve already been doing it.

So as we approach 2010, it’s time to evaluate your hotel website and internet marketing efforts. Take a look at your current hotel website from a user perspective. Is it easy to navigate or does it confuse the user with too many options? Does it provide the user with the information he or she wants, or does it just show beautiful images? Does it address the needs of individual travelers i.e. business vs. leisure or does it just group all information together? Do you have links to your Twitter and Facebook account on your site?  As Chris says there are so many opportunities for hotels in this space – and we believe 2010 is a great time to start employing these exciting new strategies. Stay tuned to our blog for part II of Innovative Website Ideas for 2010.

You can see the first part of the video interview with Chris Brogan on our blog, Hotels That Listen in Social Media Generate Business.

Below is a list of some of Chris Brogan’s blog posts related to the hotel industry.

Ideas for Hotels and Hospitality

Should Hotels have Social Networks?

Café Shaped Business – The Roger Smith Hotel

Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism

Workflow – Social Media for Marketers

A Hotel Built For Media Makers

We are interested in hearing your thoughts on revolutionizing the standard hotel website. Do you agree with what Tom and Chris suggest? Are you planning to make any changes to your hotel website or internet marketing strategy in 2010? Please comment below.