As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.
1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]
The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.
I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.
Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..
John, Please review and provide me how this is possible. I have just received a stats email for my listing...
Recent detailed listing traffic statistics for My B&B:
2 visitors in August 2008
1 visitors in September 2008
31 visitors to date in 2008
Recent click through statistics to MY B&B's website :
0 clicks to your website in August 2008
0 clicks to your website in September 2008
4 clicks to your website to date in 2008
Interestingly, I have only recently rejoined B&B.com, last membership year was 2001 or 02. I joined on Sept. 29, listing not activated until 10/2. I know that the above numbers are not outrageously high but since I was not listed, how could I have 31 visitors in 2008?
The only reasoning I could come up with is that it would include the times I logged in to update my listing prior to being active but since most are before August, that doesn't seem to hold water. The other thought would be those from B&B.com who were looking at my listing. But NEITHER of these should count in the stats. And as for the click through to my site - I am completely baffled.
.
