improving BB.com value equation?

[briarrosebb]

We are seeing year over year gains of 40 to 50% in bedandbreakfast.com referrals despite no change in advertising mix with them. Kudos to them. Anyone else?

 

[Alibi Ike]

Well, you're getting my guests then because they've dropped off that much with us.

 

[scrambled_eggs]

I get a lot of guests sending me emails through our bb.com listing. It is great. I just upgraded to a higher level and hope to get even more. I did drop the other directories like iloveinns, bbonline and bnbfinder. I think it could also depend on the area you are in.

 

[Generic]

I've looked at some of them, but most of them have Canada as an afterthought... except when it comes to price. They want me to pay the same thing even though Canada is hidden somewhere. Which might explain why they have 4 (or sometimes NONE!) of the 100 B&Bs in Montreal listed.

 

[Copperhead]

Glad to hear that someone is benefiting from their listing. I run about the same small % as always.
Just recently I did a fake reservation using webervations. When the reservation request came in it listed it as from BB.com which it was NOT it was me going directly to my webervations reservation page. The tracking is still not 100% accurate.

 

[Don Draper]

Glad to hear that someone is benefiting from their listing. I run about the same small % as always.
Just recently I did a fake reservation using webervations. When the reservation request came in it listed it as from BB.com which it was NOT it was me going directly to my webervations reservation page. The tracking is still not 100% accurate..

I notice this too, when I take a phone reservation I put it right into Webervations through our site and it always comes up as "Referral from the Bed and Breakfast.com website"! NOT!
I will be dropping another level with them this year, they simply don't produce for us.

 

[Don Draper]

Keep us posted on how your switch goes! I am so glad I never had to deal with Webervations 2.0, it sounds like a headache.

 

[gillumhouse]

I dumped them 2 years ago - no regrets.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

It's time for my renewal right now to bb.com. I've dumped all their other products, but they do send me just enough to justify keeping my listing with them. It kills me though, because I just don't like how they do business. Would I fill those same rooms if I didn't renew? Maybe, but I'm not comfortable yet giving up my listing (2 cities). Maybe after a year of our new website, I'll be able to analyze our stats and get rid of them. Until then, I'm going to suck it up.

 

[Generic]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.

 

[muirford]

Glad to hear that someone is benefiting from their listing. I run about the same small % as always.
Just recently I did a fake reservation using webervations. When the reservation request came in it listed it as from BB.com which it was NOT it was me going directly to my webervations reservation page. The tracking is still not 100% accurate..

I notice this too, when I take a phone reservation I put it right into Webervations through our site and it always comes up as "Referral from the Bed and Breakfast.com website"! NOT!
I will be dropping another level with them this year, they simply don't produce for us.
.

I notice this too, when I take a phone reservation I put it right into Webervations through our site and it always comes up as "Referral from the Bed and Breakfast.com website"! NOT!

They have probably changed it to reflect that they own webervations now, huh?
We are actively in the process of switching to another booking engine. I will let you know how it goes. They've simply made it too easy for me to do so without giving so much weight to the reservations history I have with them. In fact, some recent change they made to webervations 2.0 has made the 'contact match' flag go away when I have a returning guest make an online reservation. So they've rendered the history useless.

 

[Generic]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

If you feel more comfortable, we can always switch to email. But what percentage of your traffic is coming from BB.COM
I do realize that stats may be very different in the US than for Canada. Especially considering how many of the sites simply put Canada on the back burner. But they should still be telling you on analytics what percent come in and what your bounce rate is. How are they compared to other such sites?

 

[JBloggs]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic.

TA has a zero conversion rate for us as well. It was a no brainer to drop them. It may be ANOTHER place guests look, but they certainly did not find us there.

 

[EmptyNest]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

Is that just a proprietary tracker from A cor N? I have seen them advertise it and thought it was just for their customers.

 

[Alibi Ike]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

If you feel more comfortable, we can always switch to email. But what percentage of your traffic is coming from BB.COM
I do realize that stats may be very different in the US than for Canada. Especially considering how many of the sites simply put Canada on the back burner. But they should still be telling you on analytics what percent come in and what your bounce rate is. How are they compared to other such sites?
.

Here I get a decent showing from them, but it's dropped off 50% year to year. So, where I used to average around 200-300 visits/month, it's down to around 700-900/year. It is high-quality traffic. The bounce rate is low and the page views are high. But the ultimate reservations from them are slipping. The listing used to pay for itself by March and started making money by April. Now, I'm well into summer before it's paid for.
The odd thing is, no matter what site we're listed on the CPC hovers around a dollar. The best referrer is free-Google.
I had a telemarketer call the other day trying to sell me a listing. He said, 'I can get you the traffic. If your website is not good, they won't stay to look around.' Essentially, that's the rub. Once the traffic gets there, do they like what they see?
On a couple of directories that answer was no. The bounce rate was hovering around 40%. So I dropped those because their clients were not looking for places like mine.

 

[Generic]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

If you feel more comfortable, we can always switch to email. But what percentage of your traffic is coming from BB.COM
I do realize that stats may be very different in the US than for Canada. Especially considering how many of the sites simply put Canada on the back burner. But they should still be telling you on analytics what percent come in and what your bounce rate is. How are they compared to other such sites?
.

Here I get a decent showing from them, but it's dropped off 50% year to year. So, where I used to average around 200-300 visits/month, it's down to around 700-900/year. It is high-quality traffic. The bounce rate is low and the page views are high. But the ultimate reservations from them are slipping. The listing used to pay for itself by March and started making money by April. Now, I'm well into summer before it's paid for.
The odd thing is, no matter what site we're listed on the CPC hovers around a dollar. The best referrer is free-Google.
I had a telemarketer call the other day trying to sell me a listing. He said, 'I can get you the traffic. If your website is not good, they won't stay to look around.' Essentially, that's the rub. Once the traffic gets there, do they like what they see?
On a couple of directories that answer was no. The bounce rate was hovering around 40%. So I dropped those because their clients were not looking for places like mine.
.

Did you look at the level beyond that, to see where on that site they are coming from and what the bounce rates are from the different pages? I have like a 50% bounce rate if they come off of the gift certificate pages, but it drops to 10% when they come from either the search or from my dedicated page on their site.
Also, how are you doing off of Google Maps.
One thing to consider is that different websites have different demographics (go into Audience). You can see some of them by installing and going in to the Alexa Toolbar. T/A is the only site that skews very differently. Take a look at those website and compare your own via analytics and you might be surprised at how different some of the audiences are. For example, bb.com has more with no college and bnb.com has more college but less grad school... but bnb.com has a heck of a lot more than are browsing from school... and yet have higher incomes...
Basically bb.com's audience can be summed up as:
Caucasian women 55 and over who have college degrees and above, who have no childern and work with good household incomes and half of which are American.
T/A's audience can be summed up as:
Caucasian women 25 to 65 who have some college or degrees, no children, work, have higher incomes and only about 40% of them are American (and that doesn't include sub-domains, so I assume it's MUCH lower, since they have seperate stats for TA.fr and TA.ca and TA.co.uk for example.

 

[Generic]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic.

TA has a zero conversion rate for us as well. It was a no brainer to drop them. It may be ANOTHER place guests look, but they certainly did not find us there.
.

I just found it was displaced traffic. From when I subscribed my organic searches on Google went down by basically the same amount as TA went up.
The only advantage that they really offered was posting a special. I posted one... not one person used it.
I also don't like that they said it was a special deal at 50% off for the first year, but it wasn't. They never went up to that price. To me... that's misleading, bad faith.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

If you feel more comfortable, we can always switch to email. But what percentage of your traffic is coming from BB.COM
I do realize that stats may be very different in the US than for Canada. Especially considering how many of the sites simply put Canada on the back burner. But they should still be telling you on analytics what percent come in and what your bounce rate is. How are they compared to other such sites?
.

direct hit
[/td] 28.40%
[/td] 20.73
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.google.com
[/td] 26.38%
[/td] 19.26
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.bedandbreakfast.com
[/td] 05.96%
[/td] 04.35
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.beachconnection.net
[/td] 04.69%
[/td] 03.42
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.obbg.org
[/td] 02.95%
[/td] 02.15
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.purpleroofs.com
[/td] 02.19%
[/td] 01.60
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] google PPC fed
[/td] 02.07%
[/td] 01.51
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.nwcoast.com
[/td] 02.00%
[/td] 01.46
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.google.ca
[/td] 01.91%
[/td] 01.39
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.bnbfinder.com
[/td] 01.75%
[/td] 01.28
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.facebook.com
[/td] 01.66%
[/td] 01.21
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] blog.xyzbedandbreakfast.com
[/td] 01.56%
[/td] 01.14
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] webmail
[/td] 01.49%
[/td] 01.09
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] search.yahoo.com
[/td] 01.38%
[/td] 01.01
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.excellent-romantic-vacations.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] us.mg2.mail.yahoo.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] us.mc307.mail.yahoo.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] us.mg3.mail.yahoo.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.bbonline.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [td] [/td] [/tr] www.thebedandbreakfastdirectory.com
[/td] 01.37%
[/td] 01.00
[/td][/tr][/table]This is how intell-a-keeper gives you the information. I really don't care how many hits I get from a directory, I only care how many actual reservations I get. This list represents actual reservations that have come in the last 1 1/2 months (in our slow season). These are from not only online bookings, but also most phone reservations (sometimes I forget to have them click the intell-a-keeper logo when I'm on the phone with them). As you can see, this program allows fractions of reservations coming from different sources. For instance, if a guest has seen us on bb.com AND bbonline, the program will assign 50% of that reservation to each directory/source. Many times the reservations have more than 5 different sources they found us on.
The first number is the % of bookings and the second number is the actual number of bookings. There were 73 actual bookings and by far, the most came from direct hits and google.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

Are you tracking your website with Google Analytics or something like that, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from?
It's the reason I dropped T/A, the traffic was simply traffic displaced... it wasn't adding to my traffic and the bounce rates were just too damn high. I didn't see the point of paying them that enormous fee for that small uptick in traffic. But BB.com sends me a lot of traffic..

I track with google analytics and also a b&b stats program called intell-a-keeper which can track exactly where an online reservation comes from. It even helps when a reservation comes over the phone...you just tell the person to click on a logo on your homepage and it will track where they found you. It's pretty cool.
.

Is that just a proprietary tracker from A cor N? I have seen them advertise it and thought it was just for their customers.
.

CL, if your question was for me, yes, it's from that company, but you don't have to host or have them design your site. It can be added to any site from what I understand. They just have to put the coding in.