Importance of Web Analytics – Fairmont Hotels

Overview – Web Analytics

            Remember the title of this blog – Novice Introduction to Web Analytics, so the author wants to give an overview of web analytics to start.  In the author’s opinion, it is very important for businesses to base decisions on Web analytics.  Web analytics systems “do an excellent job of supporting the creation and deployment of digital dashboards and key performance indications that provide business a critical view of sight activity” (Peterson, 2008). The system quantifies visitors’ action such as visits to the site, pages views, etc. Peterson states as more companies shift to doing business online the worst thing is not understanding or analyzing what customers are doing to online.  In Peterson’s view executives that “aggressively pursue” a better understanding of a customer’s experience online “will have a substantial advantage over those who insist on a simplified view of visitor behavior on the Internet” (Peterson, 2008). 

            Web analytics provide insights to eight different metrics:  “Visits and Unique Visitors, Time on Page and Time on Site, Bounce Rates, Exit Rates, Conversion Rates, and Engagement” (Kauskik, 2010, p. 59).  Visits [sessions] reports include numbers of visits to website.  Unique visitors approximate the number of different people to the website.  Time on page measures the time a visitor stays on a page and then time spent on a site.  Bounce rates “measures customer behavior, perhaps the most holy of the holy goals in measurement” (Kauskik, 2010, p. 51).  Exit rate “measures how many people left the website from a certain page” (Kauskik, 2010, p. 54) Conversion rates are either a visitor or a unique visitor that turn into a purchase from a company’s site.  Finally, engagement is “trying to create a website experience that draw favorable attention” (Kauskik, 2010, p. 56).  Because of the overwhelming amount of data that can be obtained from Web Analytic tools, it is important for companies to decide on what to measure that is ultimately important examples include sales, customer satisfaction and/or loyalty.   

            The author believes Google Analytics is the tool to use.   “More than half of Fortune 500 companies are now using Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium and 30 new enterprises have switched to or added Google Analytics in the past 9 months” (Farnia, 2012).  No reason to use another tool is there? The most important reason is GA provides almost all needed metrics and is free.  GA Analytics “can show: 1) how people find a site; 2) how they explore it; and, 3) how a site owner can enhance the visitor’s experience” (Reed College of Media, 2015 – Lesson 5)

Fairmont Hotel – Google Analytics Use

            The author looked at one of the case studies highlighted on Google’s Success Story website – Fairmont Hotels.  Fairmont “is a leader in the global hospitality industry, with a distinctive collection and a worldwide reputation for excellence” (Fairmont.com, 2015).  Fairmont “is a luxury hotel company with more than 60 distinctive hotels and resorts worldwide” (Google.com, 2015). The author would consider Fairmont Hotels an e-commerce site because many hotels chains find most people are booking stays online. “With 57% of all hotel bookings made online and 97% of all travelers searching for a place to stay using the Internet, the importance for hotels to adapt best e-commerce practices is more important today more than ever. A hotel’s website should be the property’s best sales representative, persuading potential guests to book a room [on the site] and not with your competitors” (n.d., 2014).  

Fairmont’s Web Analytic Approaches 

            Fairmont “wanted to gain a better understanding and optimize social media marketing efforts” because “more and more marketers are engaging with their customers through social media channels” (Google.com, 2015).  To better understand how Fairmont used Google listen to the following video:

            Fairmont “used campaign tracking variables to monitor [particularly] Twitter campaign performance,” and, also, “employed advanced segments to measure user behavior and conversion data” (Google.com, 2015).  How did it work?  Fairmount used Twitter to create an online buzz to drive traffic to it online sites within its portfolio of hotels.  However, the goal was for Fairmount to detect and track website traffic produced by their tweets and see the results of conversions.  It is easy to traffic the referrals from twitter.com to the website but the difficulty arises because “a significant proportion of Twitter traffic doesn’t originate from twitter.com; many Twitter users don’t use the web interface…many use desktops or mobile apps…and a link might be forwarded” (Google.com, 2015).  So how would Fairmont be able to determine how this campaign worked?

            The problem was solved by using Google Analytics’ campaign tracking variables.  Barbara Pezzi, said, “The problem was solved.  Campaign tracking variables allowed Fairmont to tag links so that Google Analytics can recognize and measure  non-AdWords campaigns that brought visitors to Fairmont’s site” (Google.com, 2015).  Simply stated, tracking variables were applied to links in Fairmont’s tweets, these variable then can correctly be attributed back to the respective tweet “regardless of where the visitor found and click on the link” (Google.com).  The process involves creating different URLs and then using a shortening service to abbreviate them.

 What data did Fairmont collect?

            Fairmont was able “to view how many visits each campaign tweet generated as well as additional data such as bounce rate and the number of percentage of new visitor” (Google.com, 2015). Fairmont could determine “how tweets contributed to room billings, revenue and conversion objective by clicking the ‘Goal Set’” (Google.com, 2015).  Additionally, Fairmont could see what stories resounded the most with customers.  From this the Fairmont took another step further to see what visitor looked at on the site using more advance segments.  Overall results reported the “insights into effectiveness of Fairmont’s social media campaigns” and “improved understanding of social media referred visitors” (Google.com, 2015). 

Other Idea

            Fairmont has an incredibly extensive website from the company’s history to special deals, etc. One thing the author did not see was a blog.  This may be something that Fairmont may consider using.  Additionally, the author would suggest possibly generating the same campaign using another social media channel such as Facebook.  There is large segment of people in what the author assumes in their target market not on Twitter and solely uses Facebook.   One interesting thing the author found on the Fairmont site is an Affiliate Program.  The premise is an affiliated partner that promotes Fairmont on their site could actually receive a commission.   The author assumes a retail website could use this program.  Certainly, Fairmont is tracking this through analytics.  One last note about Fairmont, the company understand how important web analytics is by actually employing a Director of Analytics and Search Optimization. In the author’s opinion because of how important the web site is to Fairmont, having this position in house make sense.

           

References:

n.d. (2014).  10 Best e-commerce practices for hotels.  Retrieved December 6, 2015 from: http://smartguests.com/blog/10-best-e-commerce-practices-for-hotels/#.VmRmjL9WLKE

Farina, C. (2012).  51% of Fortune 500 companies use Google Analytics.  Retrieved December 5, 2015 from: https://www.e-nor.com/blog/web-analytics/51-of-fortune-500-companies-use-google-analytics

Google.com. (2015).  Retrieved December 5, 2015 from:  https://www.google.com/analytics/standard/success-stories/#?modal_active=none

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing. ISBN# 978-0470529393

Peterson, E.T. (2008). The voice of customer: Qualitative data as a critical input to Web site optimization. ForeSee Results.

Reed College of Media. (2015).  Lesson 5: Google Analytics