From looking to booking on websites – get bigger return of investment in web marketing – Part 1 of 2

It didn't take long time before company within the travel industry understood that internet was particularly well suited for travellers to collect information about destinations and cultures.

The amount of information is enormous to dive into for they who search for inspirations and plan a journey.

Websites have popped up in an incredible speed, but not every site owner has utilized the advantages of the new medium as well as they could.

Problems and challenges
• Many visitors will not become your customers when they make inquiries.

It's could be because the staff are not checking the mails regularly. They don't keep their e-mails either and send follow-ups on a regular basis and remind them your new services and products. I am sure many travellers have experienced sometimes that they have got very late replies on their e-mail requests, or even worse: they don't get replies at all. It could be due to technical problems, but it could also be due to lousy service attitude among employees in the company to serve customers, or maybe it could be due to a poorly organised company where no persons have a dedicated responsibility for the customers?

If you consider to book through a company like this, do you think their service will be better after the booking and payment? No, no, definitely not, and that's because visitors don't book at such companies. I have also visited websites where e-mail addresses and contact scheme don't work. How do these website owners expect to get in touch with potential customers then?

• Some websites takes too long to download. Many of these websites have heavy flash and photos, which make it especially long to download them (longer than 20 seconds?). Impatient visitors give up easy, and leave quickly. If you run a business where you try to reach potential customers around the world, you should be aware that not every internet surfer have fast internet access as broadnet.

• Visitors also may get lost because they have uploaded a website, which is modified and where some of the old pages are deleted. However, these old pages are still indexed with the search engines, so visitors will still click on the links and attempt to enter companies` websites through these broken links.

• Lack of user friendliness on the website, will cause a short visit. First of all, you must make sure that your website has a user-friendly navigational structure. The first-time visitor might get lost in your pages. It is very important to enable your visitors to easily find way around your site, or they will soon be lost.

• Many companies` websites are static. It could be useful to have database in the bottom so webmaster and other persons in the company could update the website easily with news articles and photos. If the site owners don't update their websites the search engines will not catch new words and phrases, and they will loose opportunities to attract visitors in this way.

• People in companies have forgotten or just haven't realized the value of displaying their guarantee for products and services. Sale is about credibility. They should keep in mind that they are selling "trust", especially when you sell through website and e-mailing. Some website owners have asked me the same question: "our website gets lot of visitors, but we don't get any bookings! What are we doing wrong?"

Website seen as an amusement park
When you consider web marketing activities, the basis questions are:

• How many more visitors to you expect?

• How many of them will book (based on your converter rate from earlier experience)

• What will be the revenues from the bookings (during the campaign period)?

Most website owners forget that their websites are available for everybody with internet access. They have to be metropolitans because they need to communicate with people from all over the world and who belong to different customers segments. There are no distance between them and their customers that could keep them from communication as far both have internet access, and there is no technical problems.

In the book "Brand building on internet" the authors Lindstrøm & Andersen writes that a website could be compared to an amusement park in cyberspace, where a great many experiences or attractions are available for visitors, but where it is up to the visitors to organise what they do on their visit.

According to the authors, the attractions are intended to support the overall experience the brand wants to represent. The more it is possible to predict the reaction of the visitors, the greater the likelihood that the visit will be a success, and that the position of the brand in the users` mind will be strengthened as a result.

How does this way of thinking affect understanding how a website is to be built? Firstly, they say, the sole aim is not to get as many people to come to the main gate, but to make the park so attractive that the visitors will enter and stay inside for as long time as possible and thereby build up a relationship with the brand by means of the many attractions. The aim is naturally that the positive experience will rub off on the brand and, not least, lead to a return visit a short while afterwards.

If your visitors don't book, you don't have a business!

Benefits for advertising
Advertising is growing on internet, but it's still in early phase. Traditional media is declining the same. Many who are used to advertise in traditional media consider now to try advertising on internet. So they are asking me: "What are the benefits?". There is no simple answer on this, but it could be answered by returning some questions:

• What's your goals (ambitions) for the web marketing (own website for company information, branding, advertises on our websites, e-mail campaigns etc), and how much money are to will to spend to achieve reach your goals?

• Could you achieve benefits from the campaign afterwards? Has your campaign a potential for a long term marketing effect?

• What's the economical value of your web marketing efforts (budget for profit = expected income - operating and marketing costs)?