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Are people navigating through your travel website like you want them to? The only way to know for sure is to have a good tracker, one that has the ability to track conversions. In the long run, you will save an incredible amount of money by allocating it where it is best spent. In other words, a good tracker enables you to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Possible conversions to track: Robust trackers, like the Blizzard ROI Tracker, allow us to set up campaigns to track conversions for pay-per-click campaigns, e-mail marketing, directory submissions, link building, URL redirects, and so forth.

• Tracking Revenue: if you sell an item or give people the option to book a room at your hotel online, a good tracker will track not only the revenue generated, but also from which source on the Internet the booker came. For example, let’s say I manage a hotel in Fort Collins, CO, and I’m using the Blizzard ROI Tracker. I could see that, for example, in January 2005, 7,035 people arrived at my site from the keyword “Fort Collins Hotel” in my Google Pay-Per-Click account, and I received $355.67 worth of bookings from those visits. I can then see in Google that I spent $3,455 on the term “Fort Collins Hotel”. I could then reduce or delete that term because it is obviously not producing a very good ROI. This kind of information is incredibly valuable!

• Tracking a Reservation Redirect: we know that many people shop online and probably end up calling to finalize the booking or sale. As such, relying solely on tracking the revenue as a conversion is not enough. While we offer call tracking to some of our biggest clients in the travel and tourism industry, there are still ways to see if people are navigating through your site to the booking engine or shopping cart like we want. Having a campaign that tracks a jump page to the booking engine can give very valuable information. For example, I would be able to see that of 1,250 people that arrived to a site from a February 2006 Valentine’s Special e-mail blast, 545 jumped through to the booking engine. I would be able to evaluate that the newsletter blast was a huge success at a low cost. Even though no one booked online, it is likely that they called to reserve the special and I could also see that almost 44% navigated through the site to the booking engine!

• Tracking Thank You Pages: having thank you pages load in response to a visitor completing a “Contact Us” form gives us even more valuable information; tracking these can help us determine the success and/or failure of a campaign. Make sure you setup a separate thank you page for each major category. For example, have a unique form for weddings, general inquiries, catering, family reunions, business retreats, and so forth, on your travel and tourism website. Obviously, people will not book a wedding online as it is not an option. So, to track the success of wedding directories, wedding pay-per-click terms, and so forth, a thank you page after a “Wedding Coordinator Contact Form” can be created.

The possibilities for tracking conversions are endless, but the outcome is the same. Tracking various conversions, like the ones listed above, gives information that helps you make more money… and save more money. With the ever increasing cost-per-click in PPC accounts, and the increasing costs for directory submissions, it is essential to know what marketing strategies are and are not paying off for your travel destination website.

Katie White - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

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