I just checked my stats for B&B.com & here are my results:
In '09 there were 23902 impressions of my Brief Listing: only 8% of those went to my Detailed and just under 1/2 of those on to my website from there
This year there have been only 14276 impressions to my brief listing: 9.5% to my detailed with about 60% conversion to my website.
With only 33 more days left to the year and down by almost 10,000 views, there is no way to come close.
The monthly average has DECREASED just shy of 700 views (of brief listing) this year compared to last.
Click through value - click thrus to my site are about .75 this year, each based on my Silver listing
My stats vs there stats; my stats show 23 less click-thrus than their stats.
A couple of thoughts on these things... (1) the number of clicks is only relevant if you have a feel for how many clicks = 1 booking - otherwise it is just a combination of looky-lous, potential guests, guests, and people who found you because they were researching a related topic. (2) The BB.com stats (or those provided by other directories) will not match your stats from your tracking program (whether it is Google Analytics, SuperStatz, Intell-A-Keeper or whatever). Consequently, the directory's stats should only be used for comparison with their own stats from a prior year - but not for comparison with other booking sources. Use your own stats program to compare booking sources - otherwise it is apples to oranges.
To get a sense of clicks vs. bookings, create a spreadsheet of booking sources and (based on some data like guest feedback or whatever you use to figure out where a booking came from) . To do this, create columns for booking source, number of bookings, number of clicks from the source, and number of clicks per booking. You may also want to add a column for revenue from that source, cost of the source, and revenue per click. So your sheet looks like this:
Directory name Number of bookings Number of clicks Clicks per booking Revenue Cost Revenue per click
- Clicks per booking is the number of clicks divided by the number of bookings
- Revenue is either actual revenue for that source (if you know that figure) or figure out your average booking value and multiply it by the number of bookings to get the Revenue for that source.
- Cost is the actual annual cost of the booking source.
- Revenue per click is the Total revenue from the source, divided by the number of clicks from the source.
If you want to go one more step, add ROI (return on investment), which is equal to the total revenue for the source minus the annual cost for that source, then divide that amount by the cost of the source. For example, if a directory costs $100 per year, and brings in $900 in revenue, the formula is ($900 - $100)/$100 = 8 so the ROI is 8. Bigger numbers are better ROI. Most directories seem to run between 5 and 10 for ROI, but it depends on many factors. Also, bear in mind that some directories provide indirect value - things that do not directly translate into bookings for you. These include publicity (PR), and other types of promotion for the industry, and perhaps for your property.
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