Hotel Website Metrics For Success

We are going to say this once – hotel website metrics are not the only judge for your hotel’s success, but they are an excellent indicator.

Of course your hotel’s success should be coming from satisfied guests, word-of-mouth recommendations, your built-up reputation from thousands of successful reviews, but that is not always on the cards.

That’s why there are four important hotel website metrics that you need to pay attention to:

• Ranked Web Pages

• Exit Pages

• Bounce Rates

• Geolocation

Why Are These Metrics So Vital?

Why do they matter? Surely you can simply take a look at customer reviews and go from there?

For two reasons:

• Biased reviews

• Only provided by guests, not visitors

Biased Reviews

Unfortunately, guests are not the most interactive of individuals after they are home. They must unpack, settle the kids down and start washing sand out of suitcases all while dealing with post-holiday blues.

The general rule is:

• Very Satisfied Guests – Likely will review

• Satisfied Guests – Unlikely to review

• Apathetic Guests – Unlikely to review

• Angry Guests – Almost always leave a review

This can skew your hotel guest reviews wildly. For every 30 satisfied guests, there will be one that finds a flaw. 

Unfortunately, they shout the loudest.

Only Provided By Guests

Guest reviews do provide a great deal of insight and value, but they are only provided by guests who have passed through your conversion funnels. They give real-life experiences, but if you as a hotelier want to improve your online marketing strategy, then they are fairly unhelpful.

That is why we take a look at 4 vitally important hotel website metrics that involve guests who are still going along the customer journey.

After all we want direct bookings, not just website visits.

Hotel Website Metrics – Ranked Web Pages

Or more specifically, high-ranking web pages.

When you receive guests at home it is normal to tidy up every visible area, especially around the front door.

Well your high-ranking web pages are all front doors. You need to know which ones are performing well, and where your guests are coming from. It also allows you to study two things:

• Where are your visitors coming from?

• What makes this page stand out?

While you study your high-ranking visit pages, you do have to bear in mind where the customer is coming from. Are they arriving from Google search? Do you have external links via your social media?

Then you have to ask yourself if the proportions are correct.

If you your social media overwhelmingly provides links to a particular page on your website – is that the page you want visitors to land on? Maybe visitors from a direct Google search are passing through your conversion funnels at a higher rate?

Or vice-versa.

There are so many different results that can be learned by studying your high-ranking pages. Ultimately you as a hotelier want the maximum number of visitors to land on your home page directly and go immediately to your booking engine.

If your other pages are more high-ranking than your home page – then something needs to be addressed.

Hotel Website Metrics – Exit Pages

It is useful to see where you have incoming traffic – but knowing where that traffic leaves is far more valuable.

For example – if most of your visitors leave your website at your home page (complete with booking engine), there are some serious issues which need to be fixed. Or perhaps curious visitors have exited your “rooms” page because they found your images unflattering.

• Is your website is chaotic and difficult to navigate?

• Do you lack decent CTAs?

• Or does your entire webpage design appear like it could do with an update?

No matter the cause, make sure that you revisit your highest-ranking exit page. Include high-quality visuals, and strong CTAs to compel visitors through your conversion funnels.

Hotel Website Metrics – Bounce Rates

They say to never judge a book by its cover, but that is exactly what guests do.

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that came to look at your website, but had ZERO interaction with your web page. 

Obviously this is exactly what we do not want. We can increase hotel website traffic without a problem, but it is useless if those visitors are not converted.

If you analyse your bounce rate, you can learn

• Which page has the highest bounce rate

• Where the traffic is coming from

More often than not, these two points are usually related. For example, if your bounce rates are on a single page, there could be an external link to that page that misrepresents what is on the page itself.

For example, if a guest searches for a “seaside holiday” and clicks on a link, then they expect a seaside holiday. If your hotel is a mountain resort then obviously guests will bounce off your page immediately. 

This is why it is vital that your hotel is accurately represented in a consistent manner across your entire online presence.

That is also where identifying your type of hotel guest comes in.

Hotel Website Metrics – Geolocation

Otherwise known as the key to untapped markets, geolocation provides you with numerous advantages.

• Identify unprofitable markets

• Gauge your website translation

• Find new, promising markets for investment

The wonders of technology. You can view the statistics of all your website visitors by geographical region. This allows you to see how many visitors come from each region and the percentages of conversion rates by each area.

This reveals which geographically-based marketing campaigns are not returning an investment on themselves. If the visitor rate is high, but the conversion rate is low, you can reasonably make an assumption that their market is competitive.

Alternatively, you can also double-check your website translation for that region’s language. Is there anything more off putting than a badly translated website?

Finally, you can pinpoint promising new markets for your hotel. By locating regions with low visitors, but a high conversion rate, you can plan your next marketing strategies with precise, actionable knowledge. 

Start Using Your Data

These are simply the tip of the iceberg.

With these hotel website metrics, you can achieve vast amounts of clear, actionable data on how to move forward with your hotel marketing strategy. There are no limitations to high-payoff marketing plans if you know how to use the data.

That’s where we come in. 

We offer free consultations to hoteliers about how to take their hotel marketing strategy forward. Not only that, but we also provide a vast number of guides for you to brush up on your knowledge.

 

So get in contact with us today and book your free hotel audit!