Mr. Tarasofsky

Website / Online Mechandising / SEO

The Wired Hotel: Getting to Know Your Visitors

By Jerry Tarasofsky, CEO, iPerceptions Inc.

Understanding who your web site visitors and customers are, what they want to do, how they tend to behave and if they've had a rewarding experience at your web site does not necessarily have to be a complicated process.

To develop a deeper understanding of who your visitors are and learn how to create a site that accommodates their wants and needs, you should now or in the very short time commit to the ongoing development of a solution to monitor customer satisfaction and their web site experience.

Let's face it - web sites are designed by people, for people. For a site to succeed, it must attract and please your visitors and customers. If a site is intended for, or targeted to a particular type of visitor, then the appeal and functionality of your site must be optimized for that type of individual. If your site is intended for a particular type of visitor ie. a business traveller, then an obvious measure of the site's success is the extent to which the business traveller's needs and desires are met. When you get right down to the basics, the best way to understand if that business traveler's needs were met is to ask them.

On the net, the visitor is king and you should be using your site to engage them in a dialogue. You can't assume by simply watching what they do that you know what they are thinking. Even more important, every opportunity you give your customers and visitors to interact with you is another opportunity to extend your relationship with them and increase lifetime customer value. It builds goodwill and fosters a sense of community that is so critical if you want to increase visit frequency to your site.

There are many ways to get to know your visitors.

The first and most obvious is to ask them for input. Why not place a "feedback" button on every page of your site or in the site's navigation bar. Every touch point is another opportunity to collect visitor feedback. Depending on the nature and structure of your site, you may want to solicit customers, visitors, or both. If you do provide this feature you must ensure that people who have submitted comments or require feedback receive response within 24 hours. It is also an excellent idea to acknowledge their feedback, even by using auto-responder type e-mail.

Once you have this feedback in hand, you should be monitoring it on a continuous basis to identify potential problem areas with your site. Keep an eye out for new technology coming into the hospitality marketplace that will allow you to identify trends and issues based on the analysis of free form feedback. You need to be able to quickly and easily analyze open-ended comments from thousands of visitors to identify problem areas on your site or with your hotel.

Another option is to randomly select customers and request feedback on their most recent experience at your site. I suggest you invite them to complete an online questionnaire. Please remember that your visitors have other things on their minds and that if you want them to answer questions, make your questionnaire short, easy to complete and totally anonymous.

Why not also use your customer service/sales representatives to collect customer feedback via phone calls though this can be time consuming and extremely expensive. If you do have an in-house call center or use the services of a call center, consider having your customer service reps collect feedback over and above their primary goal of booking reservations.

No matter what method you choose to get to know your customers, it is also critical that you continue to do so on a long-term basis. It may cause more harm than good if you initiate and then fail to follow through with a "customer intelligence" program.

Communicating with and getting to know your site visitors and guests also allows you to gather a wide variety of other extremely important information that could be helpful in evaluating the success of your site and related initiatives.

Use the information gathered from your site to gauge brand awareness and effectiveness with your most valued customers to understand if your brand delivers on its promise in your customers' own words.

Use feedback to determine what site visitors really want from your company. Getting to know your customers better can also help determine where to direct new initiatives or how to modify your advertising. As I indicated earlier, giving your best and most influential customers the ability to communicate directly with your company also extends your relationship with them and in many instances, it is these loyal customers with strong feelings towards your company that also provide the most accurate insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your site and hotel.

So now that I've shown you the value of getting to know your site visitors, how do you put this information to use?

Of primary importance, the information you collect must be in a format that you can use - you must be able to quantify and organize the data. We call it structured or organized listening. If you are unable to bring some order and reason to your data, then in a very short time you will simply be collecting and warehousing words and numbers that have no real meaning. Once you have the data organized, think about breaking it out by relevant categories or personas related to the hospitality sector such as lookers vs. bookers or leisure travelers vs. business travelers.

In addition to using feedback as performance benchmarks also consider tracking such things as the number of people who actually contact you via the site as well as the number of e-mails you receive on a daily basis.

By getting to know your site visitors better, you open a channel that allows you to tap into their hearts and minds to discover the issues that matter most to them. You will know who, when, and why they are coming to your site. You'll have a perfect understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their experience and what changes will enhance their level of satisfaction. If you know there's an issue with your site's navigation, technology or content, you can deal with it. The sooner you identify a problem, the more quickly you can respond to it.

We are living in a consumer-led, on-demand environment and listening to what your customers have to say has never been more critical. In addition to building solid relationships, listening to and getting to know your customers provides a wealth of information to help improve your web site and related marketing programs.

Jerry Tarasofsky is CEO of iPerceptions Inc. Its webValidator® "captures the voice" of the online customer, helping companies learn more about their customers. Using a comprehensive perceptual framework to evaluate key elements of the visitor experience and, algorithms and modeling to identify attributes that drive satisfaction. The webValidator solution turns data points into easy-to-understand strategic and tactical decision support. iPerceptions’ clients in the hospitality sector include Crowne Plaza, Omni, Savoy, Wellesley, Homestead, Radisson and Holiday Inn. Mr. Tarasofsky can be contacted at jerryt@iperceptions.com Extended Bio...

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