The big news in the travel industry this week was that the official star ratings for hotels is expected to be superseded by online review scores. According to John Penrose, the Tourism Minister, the current system is out of date and does not accurately reflect holidaymakers' concerns. "We are going to be publishing our tourism strategy next month and in that we back a consumer-led system like Trip Advisor rather than traditional star-rating systems." - Source: Independent.co.uk Despite the fact that the move is expected to be resisted by hoteliers, many of whom have spoken out about review sites in the wake of the TripAdvisor row, I agree with the minister. Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

Following Stefan's blog post on grading retailers for search visibility last month, I wanted to go into a bit more detail about the validity of click through rate data for positions on the first page of Google.  Over the past 4 years the statistics that have been referenced, when talking about the amount of clicks a certain position receives, come from an AOL data leak in 2006: Position 1 – 42% Position 2 – 12% Position 3 – 9% Position 4 – 6% Position 5 – 5% These statistics are a bit outdated and do not give a true reflection of the current search behaviour of someone using Google on their search journey. This is because the search results page and user behaviour has changed a lot over the past 4 years, with the brand new Google Instant showing results as you type and universal search incorporating an array of results including maps, news, images, videos and many more.  Most of the available statistics on CTRs also do not take into account the impact of paid...

Read the rest of this entry »

For years now, the success of online traffic sources has relied solely on the principle that the ‘last click wins’. This has been a major flaw in web analytics as customer journeys are often a lot more drawn out and complex that just one visit. In fact, leading web analytics company DC Storm, found that 70% of all sales consist of more than one traffic source. Their research in December 2008 also revealed that there’s an average of 3.36 visits per sale. When creating reports and performing analysis, the winning emphasis is often solely with those last clicks, and so the remaining 70% are effectively ignored. But in reality, that 70% play a vital role in the customer journey and that ever important final conversion event. Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »