Basics in E-Commerce
Introduction
The first
lecture of the Major E-Commerce and Sales in Tourism was held by Sven Häberlin
from Tourismus Consult and the topic was about basics in e-Commerce. If not
cited differently the content in this blog entry is based on the presentation
of the lecturer or the accompanying slides (Haeberlin, 2017). The goals were to
get a general overview of online marketing, know strategic approaches in online
marketing as well as learn about different aspects and tools of online
marketing.
Customer Journey
First of
all, it was essential to refresh our knowledge of the customer journey. In
online marketing awareness can be risen through social networks, online
advertisements, mobile or email marketing. In the information search phase
companies should invest in SEO, SEA and should appear in directories such as
Google my Business. During the evaluation phase, companies should appear on
affiliate networks (partner websites, e.g. TripAdvisor, Booking.com), on
reviews on social media or on price comparison websites. The company website or
microsite are quite crucial for the booking phase. Finally, it is vital to do
after sales management through email marketing. A pre-stay mail with extra
deals and post stay mails where the company asks for feedback are the last step
in the customer journey.
Shift to Online Marketing
Since the
use of the internet is steadily increasing, online marketing is getting more
and more crucial for tourism businesses. The revenues form print advertisements
are declining rapidly and therefore, companies have to put more effort into
online marketing. One advantage of online marketing is, that it is usually more
cost effective than marketing on print media. The worldwide growth in digital
travel sales in 2014 was 14.1%, in 2015 13.3%, in 2016 11.2% and in 2017 a
growth of 9.6% is forecasted. Overall it can be said, that the worldwide online
sales are increasing but less quickly than in previous years (Fund, 2016). In
2015, 50% of all booking were carried out online, which is an increase of 26%
since 2007. Since booking a flight is relatively easy and does not require a
lot of additional information 85% of people booked flights online. However,
when people like to book complex packages which meet all the individual need
they often booked offline.
Travel Facts
Another
topic during the lecture were different travel facts. In 2016, 60% of
information searches for destinations came from mobile devices, people search
while they are commuting, therefore it is vital that the website has a
responsive web design. It was also surprisingly to see that 94% of leisure
travellers switch between devices while planning and booking a trip. ROPO,
which means research online, purchase offline, is still used a lot, since 42%
look for information on the internet and later book their holidays offline.
However, it is considered, that bookings on mobile phones will increase,
nowadays 31% of leisure travellers and 53% of business travellers book their trips
on mobile phone In the US hotel bookings on mobile devices increased in 2016 by
67% compared to the previous year (Travel Agent Central, 2017). The booking process needs to be very easy and
should not involve too many steps and too much information.
Booking Channels
Trips can
be booked over several different channels. Direct bookings through email or
telephone are still the most used. However, online travel agencies (OTA) such
as Booking.com, Expedia, hotel.de or hotels.com are continuously increasing.
The hotels can set the prices by themselves and only a commission has to be
paid to the OTA. Booking.com is the most popular accommodation platform
worldwide, at the moment the platform is growing faster than its direct rival
Expedia (Forbes, 2017). Bookings through social media, hotel chain, global
distribution systems (GDS), event and conference organizers, tourism
organisations, tour operator and wholesalers are not so popular. Meta search
engines are used more often to compare prices from OTAs and wholesalers.
Examples for meta search engines are lastminute.ch, Momondo, Swoodoo, Kayak and
Trivago.
Basic Terms
To be able
to work in the e-Commerce business it is essential to know some basic terms,
therefore the most important terms are explained in the following section.
Different kinds of tags exist:
- A title tag is either the name in the browser field or the blue title link that appears in the google search result.
- An alt tag is for example when the mouse cruiser is on the picture and a descriptive text appears, this feature is benefitting for blind people, since then the computer is able read the text out loud.
- The meta tag is the short description on the google search results.
- A session is a visit to the website from a uniquely identified user. This means, that a user can visit a site several times but it counts only as one session (Fritsch, 2017). If a site generates a lot of new sessions, it is an indicator for a good usability and visibility of the website.
- A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that go to website and leave the site again without clicking on something on the site. A high bounce rate is not always a bad indicator. If all the information needed are visible on the landing page the user does not have to click on any link and leaves the website again.
The
corporate website of a company is the centre of the whole online communication,
all the measures taken, for example a newsletter, a brochure, etc., link to the
website. Therefore, the website needs to be up to date all the time, since it
is kind of an online business card of the company. A website can have three
main functions, which are point of information, point of interaction and point
of sale.
When
building up a website all the following points need to be taken into
consideration:
- The content needs to be appropriate and a good usability should be provided.he navigation should be on the top left side and not more than seven to eight navigation levels, sub navigation levels should not exceed three.
- The design needs to be consistent and has to be adapted to the target group.
- Also, the wording is important, the company should know how to address its customers.
- The booking engine on the website should be easy to use and not contain too many steps for the booking. It should save the typed in information and the booking engine should appear on every single page. So that a booking is possible on every page as soon as the user wants to book he just can type in his information on every site and does not have to search for the booking engine.
- Moreover, the website should aim to generate trust through certification and quality seals on the page, with team pictures, contact details, reviews and accepted payments such as PayPal or Visa Secure.
Potential Problems
The most
common problems users have on sites are poor search functions, missing contact
details or inappropriate enlargements of pictures. On the other hand, the most
common web design mistakes are as well poor search functions, that the site
does not meet the users’ expectations, that not a new window is opened when
users click on a link or that the company inserts unreadable text for search
engines.
Analytics Tools
Analytics
tools are nowadays a very important tool to measure for example conversion
rates. Such tools are for example google analytics, google search console,
google keyword tool or google trends.
Search
Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, short SEO, is
the goal of all companies with an online appearance. Through optimizing their
website, the company wishes to appear earlier in the search results of search
engines like Google than their competition. SEO is tremendously important since
more and more people inform themselves online before they go somewhere or
purchase a product, additionally to that SEO does not cost anything.
In order to achieve a good result some criteria
have to be considered and, if of lacking quality, improved.
SEO
Criteria
|
Ideas
for Improvement
|
Title
Tag
|
- Only relevant keywords |
Alt
Tag
|
- Revealing and insightful
description of picture
|
Keywords
| - Adjusted to possible search keywords of target group |
Content
|
|
Links
|
|
Blogs
|
|
Social
Media
|
4 Ps
Marketing
Also in the tourism sector, the 4 Ps Marketing play
a ubiquitous role. The product needs to be adapted to the target group. Online
bookings enable the tourists to find tailor-made offers, different online
platforms not only offer hotel stays but whole packages, including
transportation and activities. Online platforms also provide benefits for suppliers,
it is easier for them to place their different offers, additionally they can
adjust their prices easily to their degree of occupancy. (Early bird discounts,
upselling, price parity). In the age of online booking, promotion and placement of tourism offers merge.
Advertisements as well as the transaction can happen on the same website.
Google
AdWords
To call customers attention on a particular
website there are a few different tools available, one them is Google AdWords. Google AdWords offers two different ways of advertisements, which
will be presented in the table below.
GSN
– Google Search Network
|
GDN
– Google Display Network
|
Marketers have the chance to position
their Ad in the Search Engine Result Page. They choose different keywords
after which their Ad should appear. The advertiser only pays when someone
clicks on their link. The success (conversion rate) of AdWords is easily
measurable with Google Analytics. Other benefits:
- Control over costs (daily
budget)
- Geo-targeting
- Eye-catching (with Ad
extensions)
|
Advertiser also can display their ads,
for example banners on other websites. This is called Display Marketing. In
Display Marketing the marketer does not choose keywords but instead of that
different interests. Google shows those Ads only to people who are interested
in the product.
Other benefits:
- No divergence loss (Google
knows their users interest, due to their google searches)
- Can include rich media (film,
photos)
|
(Cybersense, 2013)
You
Tube
Other online platforms offer the
opportunity to create Online Ads. YouTube is one of them, Ads can appear as a video
before a video begins and this is also a very useful and cheap way to show products
to the target group. The list of advantages of audio-visual advertisements are
long, not only does the customer remember the advertisement more easily than
written text but a video also triggers emotions which lead to the desire of
purchasing a product (Malev, 2015).
Email
Marketing
Another popular and effective tool of
Online Marketing is Email
marketing. Email marketing includes two different
types, the direct e-mail B2C and C2B or the regular newsletter. Concerning the
newsletter some rules have to be observed. The content of the email should be
as individual and as personalized as possible, there should be a couple of
different newsletters which cover the different target groups. There are no
rules related to the frequency of the newsletter, but it is of upmost
importance that no useless, irrelevant newsletters are created just to adhere
to certain time intervals.
All these mentioned advertisements possibilities
are great cornerstones but to be successful in online marketing it is
fundamental to know which devices the target groups use. More than 50% of all
online traffic is coming from mobile phones, which requires responsive design of
websites. The bigger a company is (for example a hotel chain) the more sense an
app could make. Other useful mobile marketing tools are, for example, SMS
marketing (great without internet connection) or beacons (targeting over
Bluetooth).
Facebook
An App which is also often used on mobile
phones is Facebook. On the platform, it is possible to target very specific
people, for example young women below between 25 and 30 which live in and
around Zurich and like cats, however the success of Facebook ads is
questionable and difficult to measure.
Ranking on Booking Platforms
The tourism market has additionally to all
the ubiquitous platforms like Google, Facebook and YouTube, also
industry-specific websites, like booking.com, hotel.de, Ebookers, STC and many
more. Those websites have special criteria on which they base their rankings,
such as the conversion rate, the commissions the hotels are willing to pay, the
availability of rooms and their cancellation goodwill. Hotels make an effort to
appear on top, since it is proven that only 27% of all people use a filter and
even less go on a second page on a booking engine.
Online
Reviews
Other ways to find the best offers for
tourists are to use social media or other platforms to exchange with other
people. In this age, in the age of Web 2.0, when the web is not anymore only
for information search but also for mutual exchange between people, many
tourists search for advice and reviews on the web (Web 2.0, no date). Online reviews are of paramount importance, 88% of consumers trust online reviews
as much as recommendations from friends and 72% of consumers will only purchase
something after reading positive reviews on the web (Saleh, 2016). This should be
reason enough for companies to pay attention to their reviews online and react
in an adequate manner. Not every bad review means immediately that a business
does poor, however when 50% of all reviews state something is bad, most of the
time it is and the management should try to improve those fields. With the help
of questionnaires, bad reviews can be prevented, tourists should let off steam
before they leave the hotel and write a bad review and with help of such
questionnaires, hoteliers could improve their service quality in the future.
Zero
Moment of Truth
The fact that users trust online reviews
almost as much as they trust their friends has been developed over time due to
the fact that people travel places, none of their friends have ever been to.
This shift of trust has led to that people nowadays believe in the social
intelligence and in the masses. (the more reviews the better) The countless
reviews which exist for almost every product and service have created the “zero
moment of truth”. The so called ZMOT describes the contact which the buyer has
to a product or service prior to purchase. This ZMOT can change the decision-making process and influences the consumers
final purchasing decision (Lecinski, 2014).
Conclusion
At the end of the day most importance is
still to offer a product which satisfies consumers with its price-performance
ratio. Satisfactory products and services will only benefit from the
development of the Web 2.0 and online marketing is a tool with endless
opportunities.
Julia &
Martina
References
Cybersense. (2013). What’s the difference between google search network and google display
network?. Retrieved from www.cybersense.com/web-development-blog/2013/whats-the-difference-between-google-search-network-and-google-display-network/
Focus. (n.d.). Web 2.0. Retrieved from www.focus.de/digital/computer/technik-lexikon/web2-0_aid_263349.html
Forbes. (2017). Priceline's Market Share
Growing Faster Than Competitors. Retrieved from www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/11/pricelines-market-share-growing-faster-than-competitors/#2c57c6fb1bf5
Fritsch, A. (2017). Customer Behaviour on
Websites. Lecture
Fund, H. (2016). Online Travel Agencies.
Retrieved from www.biz.uiowa.edu/henry/download/research/Online_Travel.pdf
Haeberlin, S. (2017). Basics in E-Commerce. Lecture
Lecinski, J. (2014). ZMOT: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever. Retrieved from www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/zmot-why-it-matters-now-more-than-ever/
Malev, M. (2015). 5 Gründe, wieso
Sie ohne Video-Werbung nicht mehr auskommen. Retrieved from www.blog.plista.com/5-gruende-fuer-videowerbung/
Saleh, K. (2016). The Importance of Online Customer Reviews. Retrieved from www.invespcro.com/blog/the-importance-of-online-customer-reviews-infographic/
Travel Agent Central. (2017). Stats: Hotel
Bookings on Mobile Devices Up 67 Percent. Retrieved from www.travelagentcentral.com/running-your-business/stats-hotel-bookings-mobile-devices-up-67-percent
Comments
Post a Comment