Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Why have a Web site for your Tourism Business?

Before trying to get visitors to your Web site, consider what you want them to take away from their visit. Whether using paid advertising, or working hard to get to the top of the search listings, you need to plan what the Ideal outcomes are for visitors to your Web site. With good planning, great content, and providing opportunities for engagement you will get the results you plan for.

So, what are the Ideal Actions that you hope your Ideal Web site visitor will take?
  • Consider purchasing your tourism product or service
  • Develop a favorable opinion about your services
  • Gather more information about your tourism product or service
  • Visit your website and look at a variety of pages - blogs, image galleries, etc.
  • Purchase your tourism product or service
  • Call you
  • Want to stay in touch by receiving your email newsletter
  • Visit your tourism business
  • Save the information for future reference
  • Recommend your tourism product or service to others
Consider how your Web site would be different if you want to meet the needs of your existing guests vs. attracting new guests.

Then streamline your site: Take a look at each element throughout your Web site and ask yourself what objectives the content strives to help your tourism business achieve. Change or remove content that isn't helping you acheive your objectives.


Todd Lucier - TourismClicks.com

posted by Toddles @ 11:24 AM   0 comments

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Average Email Delivery Rates for Tourism

Review the statistics from your most recent tourism business email campaign and compare them against industry standards. These benchmarks are averages.

13 industries are mentioned in a recent study of Click through rates on bulk / newsletter type E-mail sends (in order of descending click-through rates) are:

  • Restaurants (57.5%)
  • Publishing (55.6%)
  • Pharmaceutical (23.8%)
  • Travel and hospitality (23.4%)
  • Conference events (14.2%)
  • Financial services (11.0%)
  • Technology (10.9%)
  • Government (9.5%)
  • Insurance (9.5%)
  • Consumer packaged goods (8.6%)
  • Entertainment (8.1%)
  • Retail (6.0%)
  • Automotive (5.7%)

For all sectors combined, the average delivered rate stands at 91.2% with an average open rate of 78.8% of those e-mail delivered, click-through rate of 18.4% of all e-mail delivered, and an opt-out rate of 0.4% of all e-mail delivered.

Todd Lucier - TourismClicks.com

posted by Toddles @ 8:26 AM   0 comments

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Don't wait till spring to update your Web site and submit the changes to the Search Engines.
Especially if you are redrafting your site from scratch or creating a new Tourism Web site.

Google results will not likely show your tourism Web site for a few months after they know you exist. While no one is sure how the Google ranking system works for Web sites, it is clear that NEW Web sites spend a great deal of time at the bottom of the heap regardless of relevance and link generation strategies.

Many refer to this as the Google Sandbox. The time to be in the sandbox is when your Ideal guests are not looking for the type of experiences you offer. If your primary lead generation and sales time is the spring, as it is for most tourism businesses, do your Web site work this fall to be sure your get out of the sandbox in time for spring bookings.

Todd Lucier - TourismClicks.com

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Saturday, September 09, 2006

Are you into online Video? You will be

The availability & accessibility of video through Google Video (http://video.google.com )and YouTube is already expanding options for webmasters, and tourism providers. With the easy ability to store media files on Google or YouTube servers and embed those files in blogs and websites, Internet users can expect a greater visual experience as tourism experience providers discover and make use of tools that literally could alter the way we plan travel.

Online tools such as http://www.eyespot.com allow users with no experience edit videos using an internet browswer.... what could be simpler. Whether captured on a digital camera, cell phone or digital video camera, great results are astonishingly easy to achieve.

Sign up for all these services is easy.

To determine what kind of video content is most appropriate for your site, ask yourself the following question:
"Why is the Web visitor clicking a link and coming to my site?"

Creating rich content with audio and or video that responds to the needs of your Web site visitor is a giant leap towards making your phone ring!

Todd Lucier - TourismClicks.com

posted by Toddles @ 10:22 AM   0 comments

Friday, September 08, 2006

Google is testing out paid ads that display on Cell phone. For hotels, there could be a really significant first mover advantage to testing out Pay Per Call Ads that are shown to Cell phone searchers.
Imagine you are travelling and expect to make your reservation closer to your arrival time, ie: same day.
A traveler types in "hotels, Calgary" on their Web enabled cell phone and paid ads show 12-18 characters of text with your phone number. When the traveller clicks the phone number to dial the advertisers number, the advertiser pays, and gets to speak with the potential buyer.

What is this type of user "Action" worth to a hotel?
How can you stimulate such a click?
Do you know if you are generating any business from Cell phone Web browsers?

Perhaps the question we will soon be asking those who call is: "What type of device were you using to find our number?"

Todd Lucier - TourismClicks.com

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