This article examines customer segmentation in the online hospitality sector and how to structure your web site to maximize the value of your most important web site visitors.
More than ever before, hospitality marketers are being asked to justify expenses based on metrics and it should be no different for those responsible for the development of your web site initiatives.
When it comes to updating your web site, the first and most obvious question your web team must ask themselves is – “did the site meet, surpass or fall short of the objectives that were set out last year?”
It can be said that in the online world everything can and does impact Branding. From the tone and feel of the copy and content, to the length of time it takes to navigate your site, each component of your web site has an impact on how users perceive your brand.
In order to provide a rewarding and meaningful web site experience for site visitors and to also insure your web site delivers a respectable ROI, it is imperative that you understand what makes your web site visitor tick – you must access their “Consumer DNA”.
In the hospitality sector specifically, a web site can be one of the most valuable weapons in your marketing arsenal for listening to, understanding, and responding to the needs and wants of your customers, both online and offline. I said can, because in order to be able to respond to the needs and wants of users, web site owners must first be able to collect and interpret user feedback in order to really hear and understand what their users are saying.
According to Forrester Research, online hotel bookings will double in four years from $6.9 billion this year to $14.7 billion, making travel the number one activity for Internet lookers and bookers. If you want to be part of this picture, you have to sit down and take stock of your web site.
I thought it would be fitting to look back at the past year and provide perspective on the vitally important business traveler segment of the market and look at some of the changes we’ve observed based on the actual user feedback our clients have received. The data is based on 25 webValidator™ studies conducted over the last two year on hotel web sites in North America and Europe using feedback from over 14,000 actual business travel users.
