4% of 10,000 or 2% of 30,000? The impact of adding destination content

Lets say you run a website on behalf of a tour operator - and this website - much like most tour operator websites - focuses on describing, promoting and selling that operator’s travel products. This is what I call a “product website“.

However one aspect of running a product website is that you are constantly having to promote your website in order to ensure that people travelling to that part of the world appreciate that your website exists.

The alternative is to produce what I call a “research website“.

A research website is one where users come to first….. in order to understand more about the destination that they are travelling to. Once they have undertaken their research they will then enter “product evaluation and buying” mode - and your products, along with other products from other websites, will be considered.

Key points about research focussed websites:

• Users tend to share knowledge about the existence of websites that are informative (rather more than websites that sell product). For example - oh you are going to Greenland - have you seen this website? It is really good.
• Journalists, guide books and non-commercial websites like to link to (or mention) websites that don’t have a 100% commercial feel (people link to this blog for example, but we do commercial things on this website as well - but people still link because hopefully these blog postings have some value)
• Not every tour operator can have a leading “research website”. We know that users go from site to site during the product evaluation phase of their purchase - but they won’t go from research website to research website - unless the first ones they go to are not very informative. (FYI - I normally like to back these kinds of statements up with facts - but I don’t have any on this one - this is an intuition and judgement call). Incidentally, because not every tour operator can have a “best research website” title - there is a long term competitive advantage to getting a website into this state - as it is uneconomic for a competitor to replicate in the future.
• You will be better trusted as a destination expert.
• You may learn about products that you are not currently selling. For example many small tour operators who run guided tours don’t sell hotel only reservations for hotels in their area. This though is the market that many larger tour operators are only in - therefore there is demand for these products from consumers.
• Users will come back to your website again and again….. without you even having to remind them. Your website will become “bookmarkable”.
• Your website will rank better within search engines!
• Your user booking conversion percentages will go down. The question you will have to ask is would you prefer 4% conversion on 10,000 visitors or 2% on 30,000. I would go for the 2% on 30,000 - because I know I can monetise the other new visitors anyway. Besides 2% of 30,000 is a larger number of bookings! (OK - you have to be careful with conversion numbers if you are doing Pay Per Click - but apart from that - who really cares about this number anyway? I just care whether a user, on every visit, achieved what they came to the website for - if they came to find your telephone number - and they found the telephone number - that is a success)

I will cover what makes a good research website at some future time - this is a slightly tricky subject as it is destination specific although there are some good general ideas out there.

I also have to be fairly careful to not give away too many new ideas - unless someone else has done it first in which case I can report on what people are doing. (I give my good new ideas to clients in return for money!)

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