Hotel group benefits from conversion optimisation

Macdonald Hotels has invested in a service offered by Redeye to help clients improve conversion, known as conversion optimisation.

Conversion optimisation is said to have helped Macdonald Hotels achieve a significant return on investment.

The service helps clients improve their online marketing strategy by integrating web analytics with usability to fully understand the behaviour of online customers.

As part of the service implemented by Macdonald Hotels, Redeye carried out an expert usability review of the company's website incorporating analytics research on the user experience.

Using this information, Redeye produced a clear, evidence-based optimisation report detailing the findings along with recommendations to improve the website.

For Macdonald Hotels, two of these improvements were embedding registration into the booking process and introducing a 'please wait' animation for the hotel search.

As part of the service, Redeye also investigated areas to use e-mail to re-engage users who started booking but failed to complete.

A specific abandoned booking process was devised to understand the behaviour of these users and a behavioural e-mail campaign was designed to communicate back to them in a targeted and timely fashion, encouraging re-engagement.

From the usability improvements recommended by Redeye and the e-mail marketing campaign implemented by Redeye, the following results were achieved: more than GBP350,000 in increased revenue was received over the first year and a 12.15 per cent increase in conversion of people searching on the website.

If all these additional searches went on to book, it would equate to an additional 6,089 opportunities to book each month, equalling GBP1,273,757 sales opportunities per month.

Based on the current average conversion (2.52 per cent), an extra 153 bookings could be made per month, equalling around GBP32,006 worth of sales per month - an annual increase in revenue of GBP384,072.

The abandoned process behavioural e-mail programme received a 40 per cent click-through.

Forty per cent of users receiving the initial e-mail clicked through to the site, and of these, 65 per cent actively searched for a hotel and four per cent went on to make a booking.

The exit rate from the booking page was not affected and the average pages seen on site and the time taken to book did not change.

This indicates the changes have not had any negative effect on the overall user experience.

The registration rate from booking almost doubled from 36.1 per cent to 71.6 per cent.

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