With a growing number of travelers using mobile search to book their vacations, it’s a great time to be in the tourism industry, assuming you have an e-commerce option for your customers. Whether you’re offering hotel rooms, dinner reservations, or curated experiences, your customers are more likely than ever before to make their travel purchases online and on the go. But, how can you tell if the e-commerce side of your business is operating at peak performance? With a strong track record of successful marketing for zoos, museums, and other tourist attractions, Search Influence is here to help! We’ve compiled the top five Google Analytics metrics that your business should be tracking to make sure you’re optimizing your potential.
1. E-commerce Conversion Rate
Google divides the number of completed sales by the number of visitors to your website to provide your e-commerce conversion rate. This metric is one way to measure your business’ success in terms of online sales. While it does not measure how much revenue each sale brings in (that’s the average order value, and we’ll talk about it next!), your e-commerce conversion rate tells you how many visitors to your site have become paying customers. It’s an especially important metric to keep track of because converting current visitors into customers is much more cost effective than acquiring a new customer base.
Of course, e-commerce isn’t the only conversion rate you can measure. Break down conversion points on your site into micro and macro. In the world of e-commerce, your macro conversion would be a purchased products/tickets. Micro conversions are smaller actions that lead up to the end goal of purchases. For tourism, this would likely include visits to key pages (like ticket pricing page), to adding something to a shopping cart, to email signups. You should watch your success of micro conversions and tune your campaigns to those as well, as each of these actions should be designed to drive customers toward macro conversions—increasing that e-commerce conversion rate of visitors turned into paying customers.
2. Average Order Value
Average order value tells you how much revenue online purchases generate for your business, on average. It is calculated by finding the total revenue generated from online orders and dividing it by the number of orders. According to some experts, like Databox, it could be the one most important metric for your e-commerce business to focus on.
So, how do you improve your average order value? MonsterInsights provides some key suggestions.
First, price your products with upselling in mind. For example, if you’re a photographer shooting on-site family vacation photos, you might offer a base package of 20 photos, with the option to add more at an increased price-per-photo rate.
Second, offer product bundles at discounted prices. For example, if you’re running a walking tour company, you could bundle together a daytime and a nighttime tour. Customers will be enticed by the promise of extra touring for their dollars, and you’ll still gain more income than if they had just purchased a single tour.
Finally, offer savings with a minimum order—something like, spend $100 and get $20 free. Customers may spend more than they ordinarily would just to access the discount. All three of these strategies can drive up your average order value, bringing in more revenue for your e-commerce tourism business.
3. Revenue Per Visitor
Revenue per visitor is a crucial metric – increasing it can mean revenue growth for you without having to drive new visitors. You can increase this metric by both converting more visitors into customers and increasing your customers’ average order value. Revenue per visitor is calculated by dividing your total online revenue by the number of unique visitors.
You can increase revenue per visitor by using any of the previously discussed methods, like upselling, bundling products, and offering discounts with a minimum spend. Keep in mind that a low revenue per visitor is not necessarily an indication that your business is struggling. For example, if you’re selling lower priced items, like postcards or other tourism souvenirs, your revenue per visitor will be much lower than for a company selling high-dollar items like cruise tickets or hotel suites. You’ll just need a larger number of unique visitors to boost your sales and drive revenue overall, and this should play heavily into your marketing goals and strategy.
4. Customer Lifetime Value
Customer lifetime value tells you the total value that an individual customer, acquired during a particular time period, has spent with your online business.
This metric is best used for estimating appropriate marketing costs for your business, and for analyzing your customer acquisition strategy. For example, if your average customer will only spend $100 at your business over the course of their life, it isn’t worth paying hundreds of dollars to attract this customer. Maximize your return on investment (ROI) by keeping your marketing and advertising expenses reasonably lower than the income your average customer is likely to generate for your business. Most businesses are willing to spend 5-10% of revenue to acquire a new customer. (See more in our blog “What’s The Perfect Marketing Budget For Your Company?”)
5. Return on Advertising Spend
Speaking of ROI, let’s discuss return on advertising spend—or ROAS as it’s sometimes called—which is a key metric for determining the effectiveness of your digital advertising. It tells you how much income you earn for every dollar spent on advertising campaigns. If you’re running online ads and want them to be as effective as possible (who doesn’t?), you need to raise your return on advertising spend. Ideally, your ads should drive about three times as much income as you paid to advertise.
So, how can you raise your return on advertising spend to this ideal 3x level? Conversion Fanatics Blog offers some great tips. First, do some testing to figure out what channels work best for your business. For example, if your Facebook ads tend to perform better than your Google ads, channel your dollars to Facebook, where your ads drive the most revenue. Similarly, test the times at which your ads have the best results. If you notice that holiday ads bring in more clients for you than summer ads do, it could be worth concentrating your ad dollars on that crucial time of year. Finally, you can dive into even more metrics. Monitor the user journey by tracking how many customers click on your ad, how long they stay on the resulting landing page, and so on. If you can pinpoint which stages of the user journey are working well for you, and which stages are losing potential customers, you can fine-tune your ads and landing pages for an improved user experience.
These five metrics, all available through Google Analytics, are key components of e-commerce tracking for any online tourism company. For more information about how to optimize your travel business’ potential, contact Search Influence at 504-208-3900, or request a proposal today to hear opportunities from our strategists.
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