Here comes the bubble!
December 4, 2007
Sometimes it’s good to sit back and have a laugh at the industry you are in. This one made me chuckle!
HTML 5 specification (still a work in progress)
December 4, 2007
I had a good read of the new specification for HTML 5 last night. It’s supposed to break us free from the constraints of HTML 4 and the browsers (at least it will allow browser manufacturers to take things one step forwards). HTML 5 introduces a lot of interesting new features such as semantics, API compatibility, improved form controls and more. Some of the simplified mark-up should also make barriers to entry much lower, I also believe that the creators of WYSIWYG tools will find it much easier to create new web based tools to create sites based on HTML 5 due to the simplification of the document.
Rather than write a full review I suggest you go and read the write up from A List Apart here.
Top marketing opportunity… SEO??
November 30, 2007
A report has been released by Anderson Analytics as the results of a survey of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (a 1,700 strong network of marketers at VP level or higher). The survey asked what marketing concepts these executives thought were going to be the top trends and concepts in 2008.
Worryingly, when asked which marketing concepts they felt were going to be most important the second highest answer turned out to be SEO!
Now, I don’t know whether marketers are unsure what search engine optimisation is or perhaps this was a particularly ‘offline’ group of marketers, but SEO is already hugely important and in my eyes if you haven’t grasped that yet then it’s a bit late. Saying that it will be the second most important concept next year is amazing to me. It’s been part of my life for 12 years and is really just part of the routine I go through for any digital project.
Here’s the rest of the list:
If you had to ask me what some of the concepts I thought were important for next year were (in digital), I’d say:
- Offline/online translation (getting your offline campaigns translated in a seamless manner onto digital media, something that really isn’t being done very well at the moment)
- Viral (campaigns should always be thought of as viral if they touch the web)
- Widgets (cross pollination of marketing campaigns online using widgets)
- Social media (yes, it’s huge this year, but next year should see it mature and the launch of OpenSocial will make it more important than ever)
- Banners (controversial one this but we are now at a stage where banners should become more like widgets and really start to become properly engaging, whether this will happen I’m not sure as most agencies who design banners aren’t particularly forward thinking)
Underpinning all of those, and every other online marketing concept, should be SEO.
What do you think the key concepts of 2008 will be?
Seasonal web traffic increases continue to grow
November 30, 2007
I blogged the other day about the increases being seen by retail websites on Black Friday, Nielsen reported an increase of 10% year-on-year. I wrote that I still expect a 15-20% increase in web traffic year-on-year for the online travel industry in our peak booking months of January and February.
Well, Hitwise have been looking at the web traffic figures for Cyber Monday (another traditionally busy online shopping day) and they’re reporting an increase of 26% year-on-year.
Now that’s really encouraging for the online travel peak period. Travel sites tend to see the same if not more year-on-year growth than retail sites. A lot of this growth is down to the increase in web users every year as more people get online and begin to trust e-commerce as a way to make purchases. In travel that growth tends to be more pronounced.
That said, I’m still sticking with my prediction although erring more towards the higher end at 20%. Is your infrastructure ready to cope with it yet??
Yesterday I blogged about the peak online travel booking period and what people can expect to see in the coming peak trading window of January and February. I said travel websites were showing year-on-year web traffic increases of 15-20%.
Nielsen have just released data on the increases seen by the retail industry on Black Friday (one of the busiest days of the retail calendar). They’re reporting increases in traffic of 10% year-on-year. They’re also talking about the increasing influence of the crowd and say consumers are discussing tactics and swapping tips on where to shop online. The other big story of this year is the increasing influence of incentives and discounts.
So what does this mean for travel? Well, I still stand by my 15%-20% up prediction. Travel has seen more growth throughout this year than retail and I strongly believe this January will be the busiest yet by quite a margin (for us if not for the market as a whole). All the data I have supports this. For retail, who have been operating at a much more mature level than travel online, to be 10% up it bodes well for the traffic increases travel websites can expect. The influence of the crowd and incentives will also play a big role this January, with many travel providers planning sales and discounts through the peak season.
Again, I urge all travel webmasters to get their sites in order quickly or risk watching your brands web experience become a sticky, slow experience for the consumer.
Destroy the Web 2.0 look!
November 26, 2007
A great presentation from Elliot Jay Stocks at the Future of Web Design the other day:
50 best travel websites of 2007
November 22, 2007
According to the Times online.
Thanks to Travolution I’ve been made aware of this list of travel websites that the Times say are the best 50 of 2007.
There are quite a few I’ve not seen before so it’s worth a look.
Online travel agencies losing out?
November 22, 2007
A PricewaterhouseCoopers report is confirming what I had surmised many months ago. Online travel agencies (the likes of Expedia and Opodo) are beginning to lose business in favour of the customers booking direct with suppliers.
They say that online travel agencies are losing their competitive edge and now that suppliers of travel products are maturing in their use of the internet it’s not all going their way anymore.
This has been coming for a while. The agencies have got so powerful that they’ve let their fingers off the pulse. Airlines and hotel chains are engaging online marketers themselves instead of purely relying on the distribution channels they used to use. They now control their own inventory and therefore their own destiny (and profits).
Loyalty schemes have a lot to do with this. Airline frequent flyer points are a massive draw and encourage direct booking, hotels now have similar schemes and the online travel agents can’t replicate these.
This trend is only going to continue unless the aggregators work out new ways to add value for customers.
The other issue which the report doesn’t mention is the impact tour operators may be having on the online travel agencies. Tour operators are getting more web savvy too, employing better quality people and better quality tactics to position their offering more effectively online. As tour operators websites improve and product offerings get more dynamic (through the introduction of new reservation systems, something that is going on at many tour ops) the online travel agencies are going to lose further ground.
How to handle your errors well
November 20, 2007
Pingdom is a great little service which tests your website for uptime that I use on a number of sites and services. I was lucky enough to get a free account having beta tested it.
Anyway, they often have some quite good insight on their blog. The latest post is one that’s really close to my heart, it’s all about one of the most viewed pages on the web, the good old 404 error page.
In the post ‘23 percent of the top US websites have bad 404 pages‘ they discuss what a difference a well thought out and constructed 404 page can have on your websites usage.
404 pages are an inevitable problem for everyone. They can come about in a number of ways such as badly configured links, badly named files and links from search engines which point to old pages.
Of course, you can put some decent error handling in place if you want to to capture all 404 responses and redirect to the new version of a page or the best match for the page request. However there will always be occasions when you can’t avoid a 404 and can’t do anything to guess where to send the user so you need this generic page to present to users.
The biggest culprits are those which don’t have custom error pages at all and purely present the standard browser error page.
The next worst are those with unintelligible error messages and no links to any useful sections of their websites.
The way to do this properly is to make it light hearted and useful. Admit the error, don’t make the user think they’ve messed up. Offer a way out, provide useful links to the main starting points of your website, don’t make it a dead end. And most of all, make it a valuable page, if you’re selling something make sure users who find the 404 page know what you do, it can even be an opportunity to promote your products.
Online travel sales grow but number of customers drops
October 30, 2007
So online travel is motoring along as ever. Sales are rising and the number of participant websites is growing all the time. However, in the U.S. the word (courtesy the NY Times) is that 9 percent fewer people booked travel online this year than in 2005. This has come from a Forrester research survey of 60,000 U.S. web users. It is the first time since Forrester began tracking Internet spending a decade ago that a category (in this case online travel) has lost shoppers.
Another survey (results coming soon) from PhoCusWright shows that the percentage of travel shoppers booking online has dipped while the percentage booking offline has risen.
Is this something to be concerned about? Maybe. There’s a few reasons this could be happening. Perhaps customers are looking to book more and more complex trips, and therefore aren’t booking online as they feel the confidence instilled by a travel agent is necessary before parting with money for an adventurous trip. Or perhaps users are beginning to backlash against the standard online travel functionalities that haven’t changed much in the last ten years.
Henry Harteveldt, Forrester’s online travel analyst says “Customers are tired of spending two or three hours trying to find the airline or hotel or vacation package that meets their needs.” He says (like I do) that sites need to step away from asking for specifics in order to complete a search. He says “Nowhere can you say, ‘I have this amount of money to spend on a trip. These are my interests. This is where I live. Show me my options,’” he said. “Whereas online retailers have done a much better job of improving the shopping experience in recent years, the travel industry has been standing still.”
The NY Times article goes on to discuss the lack of innovation that is due to outdated reservation systems and mentions the Travelocity Road Trip Wizard I discussed earlier. Yes, lack of functionality in reservation systems is a major issue, also the technological complexity of querying multiple bed banks and GDS’ makes user intuitive searching almost impossible to create.
So, who is going to be in a position to benefit from this trend of user/customer decline? It could be the tour operators. Many of them are in the process of upgrading their systems to new dynamic package capable ones which will interface much better with intelligent search functionality. Also, they don’t need to query the bed banks as often as they have contracted bed stock so can cache availability and present it in a much more usability focussed manner than the likes of Expedia with their multi-connections to other suppliers. Of course the only problem is the lack of innovation generally at tour operators and also the desire they seem to have to become the next Expedia. That’s not the way forwards anymore. Rather than trying to emulate the online travel agents, tour operators should be trying to become the next big thing.
