If you’re a regular reader of our product updates, you’ll already know how many new tools and features the Triptease Product and Engineering Team released in Q1 this year. But what did they learn along the way? Read on for five insights from our designers, engineers and product managers into the best ways to increase direct bookings on your hotel website.
1. Personalized messaging increases conversion rate by at least 16%
A/B tests are notoriously complex and very difficult to perform accurately. When you’re testing one variant against another you need a huge volume of data in order to produce a truly reliable result. In fact, only 1% of hotels working with Triptease have the required volume of data to run a standalone A/B test.
That’s why in March this year we made the decision to run the largest ever A/B test across thousands of different hotel websites to test the impact of personalization in a way that would be relevant for all hotels.
What we discovered was that personalizing your website messaging increases conversion rate by at least 16% for small hotel groups. Watch this video to hear about the key learnings that Chief Tease, Charlie Osmond, and Chief Product Officer, Al Snow, took away from the test.
2. Direct booking achievements should be celebrated!
In March we decided to start sending celebration emails to hotels using the Triptease Platform. Hoteliers now get an email from us to congratulate them every time a message that’s live on their website reaches 100, 200, 500 or 1000 conversions. This also gives our clients the opportunity to track and learn who is creating their best performing messages, so they can replicate that success again in future.
Laura Rogers, Product Manager for our Resonance Team, said “We’re seeing open rates of more than 30% for this email which is great. We hope that this means that - as well as being able to celebrate their successes as a team - hoteliers are being alerted to specific campaigns that are performing well that they might not have spotted otherwise.”
3. Variant testing helps hoteliers create better messages
Our new message variant testing feature is proving extremely popular, with 10% of all new messages created in the Triptease Platform being part of a variant test. This allows hoteliers to run two versions of one message at the same time and track which one performs best for their business.
Sian King, Senior Product Designer for our personalized messaging product, has seen all kinds of variant tests run using this new feature - from comparing two different sized percentage discounts, to seeing if a bespoke design performs better than a template or even just testing which of two message headlines encourages customers to click.
“It’s great that hoteliers now have a quick and easy way to test their ideas around what might increase conversions on their website. Collecting real data from their website visitors on which of their messages is most successful is so valuable.”
4. Customer feedback helps us build better products
Some of the most popular tools we’ve released in the past few months have been the result of customers providing and voting on each others’ feedback via our feature request board.
Whether it’s having the ability to automatically schedule website messages or seeing additional data about your messages in your monthly performance email, the feedback we get from clients helps us build out our product roadmap and prioritize what to work on next.
Our aim is always to build products that hoteliers will use regularly and see real benefit from, so it makes sense that the tools requested by our clients are often the ones that see great engagement from users of the Triptease Platform.
VP of Product, Luke Jefferson, explained that “Our feature request board helps us collect and organize customer feedback in a structured way so we can make better decisions about what’s next for Triptease. Hoteliers are able to add their own thoughts and vote on each others’ ideas so we get a really clear picture of which features will have the biggest impact.”
Liaising with customers throughout the design process also helps the Product Team to create features that make sense to hoteliers. For Luke, involving the people who’ll actually be using the product as early as possible is the logical way to build a platform customers will want to use: “We’ve started sharing links to early prototypes to get customer feedback as soon as possible. This ensures our tools are not only the ones that customers want, but are built in a way that feels intuitive for them.”
Got an idea for the next thing we should build? Let us know.
5. Acquisition and conversion work better together
Back in January we unveiled a major rebrand to reflect Triptease’s evolution from on-site conversion solution to full-funnel direct booking channel. Triptease’s new Guest Intelligence Platform identifies a hotel’s most valuable guests then works across the entire customer journey - from acquisition to conversion - to make sure they book directly at the hotel.
“Your acquisition and conversion strategies have to work in tandem if you’re going to compete for guests with OTAs,” advises Chief Product Officer Alasdair Snow. "With our conversion software sitting across thousands of hotel websites, we've been able to spend years tracking and learning about online guest behavior. With our latest launch, we're uniquely positioned to bring this behavioral data to bear on offsite activity in order to attract and convert a hotel's highest-value guests."
Early numbers are already showing great results for hotels using Triptease’s metasearch solution, with our average hotel having seen close to 9% of its direct booking revenue coming through metasearch in the past month. These customers are converting four times higher than other customers who are landing on the website, in part because they get a more seamless, bespoke experience when they arrive.
If you’re interested in hearing more about what the Triptease Product and Engineering Team are working on, don’t forget that you can sign up to a live webinar every month to hear all the latest updates and learn more about the product. Get in touch with our Customer Success Team to sign up.
