This website health check sheet has been created from the TrekkSoft Tour & Activity Business School webinar with Tourism Tim Warren. Check out the full webinar here.
Regardless of the type of experiences you offer, the number of employees you have or the size of your business, you are probably asking the same question as every other tour & activity operator in the world - How do I increase direct bookings on my website?
Well it's easier than you may think, and only requires limited information from your Google Analytics account.
Your website will always be your most important and cost-effective sales tool. Therefore, to maximise revenue, you need to maximise direct website bookings. By increasing engagement on your website, you can grow direct bookings to increase direct revenue.
There are two important factors that can increase direct bookings:
1. Bounce rate - Reducing your website's bounce rate means increasing engagement, giving you a higher chance of converting browsers to bookers.
2. Sales conversion rate - If you increase your sales conversion rate even by 0.01%, you're converting more users on your site to bookers.
By adjusting these two factors, you can see the potential revenue increase and the projected percentage increase overall. Use this sheet to calculate your current sales conversions and experiment with incremental increases to see how it impacts projected revenue.
Example Health Check Sheet
In the example above, we have a websites current performance. It receives 5,000 website visitors each month and has a 'Bounce Rate' of 80%. Due to this, only 1,000 of the website visitors are engaged and browsing the website. On average this website receives 10 bookings a month, so the 'Sales Conversion Rate' is 0.01%. The 'Average Sales Price' is €50, so total revenue per month is €500 which is €6,000 per year.
In the projection, we can see that if this website 'Bounce Rate' is reduced by 20%, then we have double our previously engaged users, 20 bookings and €1,000 total revenue per month which is €12,000 per year. This is a projected increase of 200%.
We can also look at increasing the 'Sales Conversion Rate' by 0.01% to impact the Projected Increase.
How do you decrease Bounce Rate or increase Sales Conversion?
By improving your website and making the booking process simple for the website visitor. Don't give them a reason to leave.
We spoke about the 'Billboard effect' at our 'Hotel revenue management strategies tour operators can learn from' webinar. How can we then ensure that customers stay on our website and book there instead of on an OTA?
Here are some useful tips:
● Make sure your website is simple to use and shows the personality of your company
● Allow visitors to booking on your website with live availability
● Include book direct only incentives such as discounts, add-ons or loyalty schemes
● Show rate parity to explain that your tour price is the same on your website as any OTA website, so the visitor doesn't want to leave.
● Have office contact details including an email address and phone number
Ready to increase bookings? Give your website a health check.
