Faster baby faster

by Smallz Mancotywa

I have had the sneaking suspicion for some time now that members of the international online community may be getting sick of tourism websites with regards to the sheer number of them out there, their usability and the amount of copy and clicks involved.  

Most individuals have become accustomed to booking their holidays, business trips and general travel online, hence the multitude of these websites. Unfortunately by the time a user gets to a particular tourism website, they could have seen a whole bunch already and fatigue could be setting in. If your website happens to be one of the last they are viewing, they probably won’t even read the copy, as they would have been inundated with information by this stage of the game, and with any luck jump straight to the form.

My question is "Are there factors that prompt users to make an enquiry (if not browsing the site), or do they fill out an enquiry form with every single website they visit?”

If you can imagine the user’s fatigued click path, it could be something like:
1. Search Engine >2. Homepage >3. Form.

The decision to fill in a form could possibly rest on URL name, search relevance, professional/ appealing site design and slick forms.

While working on a PPC campaign for a tourism website we found a huge drop off occurring on the forms, so we tried the following:

•    A short pop up form with tick box holiday activities. This appears when the user leaves any form page and has not filled in an enquiry.

Despite all the scepticism surrounding pop-ups, this feature has been a real winner (responsible for almost half the enquiries on the site) as it prompts people to make a fast enquiry. In other words it is satisfying a need rather than just another hard sell!

•    Lead PPC visitors straight from ad to form (e.g. Bypass Landing page).

This also increased the conversion rates because if the ad is descriptive enough (may have heard it all before anyway and just need guidance and price) they will not mind going straight to the contact form. Even if they didn’t fill in the "bigger" form, they still get the pop up form which prompts them to make a fast enquiry.

The downside is that the administrator on the tour operators’ side has more work to do to close the deal and hence the cost of the sale/manpower increases. However, they get more enquiries and hence more opportunities. Website conversion rates and CPA's also look better!

I think the bottom line is making provision for the "reading type" visitors and the ones who need to take action extremely quickly. Within an industry as competitive as tourism, "extremely quickly" may need to be taken to the extreme!

What's your take on this? What do you do to increase your conversion rates?

2006/09/29 | permalink | comments (4) | trackbacks (0)

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