One of the problems that I have written about before is how do you launch a web based travel community when you are a risk averse large travel company. After all, creating a community is about creating the right environment - but in the end it is the people in the community (the members, not the staff) who really determine whether it will be a success or not. Also community management can require a different set of skills to running an ecommerce operation so additional recruitment to cover the new roles may be needed.

The core dilemma is that with a large brand it is a risk to start small because it doesn’t reflect very well on the brand…. and people will expect more of your site than it initially delivers. However you can’t build a new community overnight. This is why so many existing communities are being purchased by the leading travel companies as it is easier to buy than build (also completely removes the element of risk involved in building a community from scratch)

MakeMyTrip are an India based OTA travel dot com with an annual revenue of 125 million USD. They have a travel community called OkTaTa Bye Bye

I have a couple of thoughts about their community website:

Branding strategy
There is no mention of the ownership of the site at all (no connection with the MakeMyTrip.com company). I assume therefore that they are following the strategy of “release under a non-core brand name” and build critical mass - then integrate at some future point. In reverse, there is only one mention of OkTaTaByeBye on the MakeMyTrip.com website…. so they have pretty much disconnected them 100%.

Site design
It is a very busy design - by this I mean there are elements all over the page and you can navigate around the site for quite some time without quite knowing what you may discover on the next page. If an ecommerce website was designed like this I think people would object (and vote with their mouse) but for a website where you can find great destination content actually it makes the experience quite fun. I enjoyed navigating around wondering what I would find next.

I would liken it to walking around a cramped antique furniture shop! Everything is interesting to look at but you don’t know where to look because there is too much going on. Probably not ideal if you are looking for something specific.

Destination knowledge when its your “back garden”
One of the challenges of creating a community for travellers from India who are travelling around India is that much of the previous “destination knowledge” has been created for international travellers. I have no experience of solving this problem but I imagine that it requires a very different approach.

The grievance department
They have a new (and empty) grievance section on their website.

• Submit your complaint
• Discuss with the supplier on your own complaint page
• Reach an acceptable solution
• Share your experiences and thank everyone involved

This is where the real challenge of running an independent website at the same time as being a leading online travel agency starts. How will negative comments be handled? Will they be moderated if they are negative about the parent company?

Side note
I know that I have a problem with this under UK law….. because as a travel industry blogger - I can’t blog negatively about any direct competitor and use their trademark. Indeed, it is not just my own blog that is a problem but also the Small Fish Big Ocean community (where of course anyone can publish anything - yikes!)…. So businesses that are in the tour operator reservation business are safe from me…. but not if you run a travel website!

For example Coca-Cola can’t blog negatively about Pepsi….. but anyone who isn’t Coca-Cola can. (Yeah - this isn’t legal advice) (More information from Out-Law - UK law - Trademarks)

Rewarding loyalty
One of the aspects of their website that is notable is their loyalty point system:

I am not an expert on community loyalty schemes but this looks like a fun approach. I probably would have put in some “cost free” rewards such as have your profile on the homepage for a week. If I was a regular user I would probably be more excited by that than a pair of headphones.

Overall its a reasonable, functional, fun site. If I was responsible for it I would immediately do some usability testing to see if the overall navigation is understandable because that is my largest concern.

Incidentally, this website was reviewed as part of the “Review my website” theme that I started last weekend. I will repeat again next month. We had 6 entries this month! (more details)

If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you for reading!

Here is an idea for a feature that would work on a tour operator website (but it would have to be a multinational one!).

From my past experience of running tours I know that to make the tour the most enjoyable for all customers you need to create the right groups. One of the issues with adventure travel is that it can attract those in their gap years (prior to University), young professionals and more mature people.

Take a tour in Egypt….. some people go for the culture and history others go for the adventure and diving. If you put people from both groups in the same trip you could end up with some customers getting frustrated at spending too much time in museums etc.

Its not just what people want from their holiday that you need to ensure is compatible with other group members but often nationality and languages spoken. None of this is really an issue for hotels (where you don’t have to socialise with the other guests) but for group tours where you are travelling from place to place you may end up spending 10 evenings with these people that the travel company you have booked with has thrown you together with.

A couple of days ago I was having a conversation with someone and an example of this came up….. a customer from a European country booking via a US tour operator in order to travel to another European country. The customer said that they wanted to book with a US company because they wanted to be with English speaking people. Maybe the exchange rate helps as well.

Anyway, this looks like something that customers consider when booking a tour (that will be a group trip) however I haven’t seen any functionality that tour operators have used on their websites to help this?

One suggestion maybe to add, on all tours on a website, a little graph that gives the demographic information for each tour….. letting the customers move towards tours that suit them better. Not sure though.

Any more ideas?

Tour operators used to be brochure driven. Companies used to spend a great deal of money designing and printing fancy brochures.

Along came the web.

Now you don’t need brochures. Not only that - but the skills to produce a good, commercially successful, website are not the same skills as those that are required to produce a well optimised brochure. Yes there is some overlap but its not a like for like change.

So if you are a brochure specialist….. what can you do?

One thing NOT to do is put your brochure online. Please don’t (yes this is a rant)

You know what I mean….. those page flipping things that you sometimes see around the place. I don’t enjoy the experience at all.

• Slow on old machines
• Difficult to print
• Not accessible

Of course, I can’t show you examples I don’t like - that wouldn’t be fair….. so here are some examples that contain interesting information….

• Travolution February 08 edition - lovely. Best article is page 42.
• MajorPlayers salary survey - if you ever wanted to know what all the UK / London salary levels for perm / contract staff (digital) then this document reveals all. Actually very interesting reading. 

An alternative to a flipping page would be SlideShare.net. Upload a powerpoint presentation and create an audio track - then embed it around the place on your website or 3rd party websites. Much more useful.

If you absolutely have to have a flipping brochure on your website….. don’t pay a commercial company to do it for you - buy a Flash component such as Flipping Book or FlashPageFlip and ask a web designer to use that. This will be much better value.

Anyone found flipping pages to be useful?

As has been heavily discussed around the web, the next phase of the web’s evolution will be around consumption (and production) of data services.

One such example is Yahoo who have a very nice API that lets you get at the current weather in any location……

Here is the RSS feed for the current weather in Southampton, UK (which is where I am writing from!)
http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0138&u=c

Having the data is one thing but the interesting step is letting people work out what to do with it. I rather like the idea that has been demonstrated on CSS-Tricks - they have come up with a means to take the Yahoo weather feed and make your website design reflect the current weather.

If it is cloudy, your website will have a banner that looks cloudy…. if it is sunny, it will be sunny.

I can see this as being quite an interesting little hack that could be applied to many destination websites…. but I expect will get most use on company intranets in large offices without windows…..  

Further information and code from CSS-Tricks

Travolution, a UK based online travel mag, have a new edition coming out shortly.

This edition is focussed on user experience. Wonderful. I love travel website user experience…. indeed I named my own company, Travel UCD after the User Centred Design  methodology …. and we incorporated in 2002!

However, I don’t fully agree with the premise that has been put forward by David Bicknell via the Travolution cover story:

Travolution has been campaigning that a concerted effort by travel companies to improve user experience on websites can only benefit their consumers, and the sector as a whole. That is because consumers will want to develop a relationship with a site that makes it easy for them to research, book and enjoy their travel experience.

Firstly - what are Travolution doing campaigning? Are they political now? (I guess if they are going to be politicians, us blogger bods can be journalists!)

The point is, YES - if user experience on an individual website improves - that will benefit consumers that use that particular website. Commercially it is a great idea. No doubt about it.

However, I am concerned that the barrier to entry for smaller travel companies is now becoming greater and greater. I firmly believe that the web enables the smaller travel companies to compete with the big guys. Previously if you were a medium sized tour operator it would benefit you joining a larger travel industry group as you would have access to their highstreet based distribution channel. No longer.

Now, if I were a medium sized tour operator I would be looking towards the web. No need to merge with another larger group in order to gain access to their distribution channels.

I believe that user experience improvements, although ideal for individual companies and their users, actually will hinder the sector overall. It will make it too hard for smaller companies to gain a toehold within the travel industry. Only a few companies will come out at the top. Its a battle to extinction with just one or two big winners.

A healthy online travel sector is one that still has the niche travel industry companies still able to compete successfully.

We don’t want a situation like the record industry where independent record labels have to stop trading because they can’t get access to the same distribution contracts as the larger guys.

Anyway, it is still an interesting cover story. Go and read it.

It seems to be common sense that having a great, transactional, website is what every travel company should strive for. I wonder though whether websites are as effective as well trained, experienced, members of staff with deep product and destination knowledge. 

Is having a website really that golden bullet that will increase your sales by 20%?

Take for example a tour operator who mainly sells tailor-made tours. This style of travel company has challenges creating a website that successfully presents their services because, by definition, every booking sold can be so different. Specialist travel agents have similar challenges.

The conventional approach in this situation is to put up some sample itineraries giving a potential customer an idea of the kind of trip you can arrange for them and then persuade your website visitors to contact you - so your experienced staff can create some itineraries that may be appropriate. As soon as that human contact has started, you can normally sell them a holiday.

The tailor-made tour dilemma

Here is the dilemma - if you put up plenty of information - but it is not enticing enough - the customer may never get to the stage of contacting your sales team because they have made their purchase decision based on the information on the website. They have gone somewhere else.

i.e. a website full of mediocre information may actually perform worse that a brief company overview and a “contact us” form. Getting the human to human conversation started is the key.

The challenge is that if you are not confident in your skills at pulling together a great website (or don’t have a budget to pay someone else) - a mediocre website may actually be damaging to your business. That is a scary thought.

My own experience

In this area my own experience is a bit limited - I have tended to work for larger travel companies selling commodity travel (flights, hotels etc) and holiday packages. However I do speak to smaller companies who are mainly tailor-made tour specialists on a daily basis (many of whom are customers)

This challenge is similar to those I face when marketing our reservation system TourCMS. Our website has a lot of information on it about our system - including our pricing - indeed this is probably sufficient to make a purchase decision. Our competitors have minimal product information and no pricing (except for one competitor - hello Canada!) - and instead focus on arranging face to face meetings to describe their products i.e. our competitors go for human to human contact rather than web based marketing

On the occasion that I do talk to people about our product I tend to do a better sales job than our website does….. so I know that, at the moment, for us, experienced humans are better than an average website.

One of the balances that I am constantly weighing up is what to do with new functionality requests. These requests tend to fall into one of the following categories:

• A request that, if not undertaken, will mean we will lose a potential customer
• A request that, if not undertaken, will mean that not only could we lose an individual customer but also an entire group of customers with similar needs
• A request from an existing customer that needs the functionality in order to run their business
• A idea we have had

When I first started down the route of investing in creating a web based reservation system (2003) the needs were very simple. Therefore the functionality that was implemented wasn’t much more than an off the shelf ecommerce shopping cart that handled date related availability. In comparison to other travel systems, we are probably still very straightforward (because we have to ensure small tour operators can set it up themselves without needing help from us) 

However now we have a system that has grown organically with many more features than we had at the start. With these features has come increased complexity.

A couple of quotes from customers summarises our problem nicely:

I like all the new functionality and now couldn’t run our business without it. However if you look back at what we ran our business with in 2004 we probably don’t need this new functionality 

…and…

This system is too powerful with too much for us to learn

…and (from our client testimonials page)

We chose your system because it is not full of features that hardly ever get used

So you can see what the challenges are…… and it is a fine line that has to be constantly evaluated

• Do you turn down a functionality request from a new customer and instead concentrate on finding customers as similar to existing customers as possible?
• As a salesman, would you “just do this little change” in the hope of gaining a new customer- but in the knowledge that you are making the system more complex than necessary. This could cause long term damage for short term gain.

One of the problems with many of these requests from potential clients is that often companies buy systems based on a feature set that they think they need - when actually they probably only need 60-80% of them. I remember a project for a large UK tour operator I was involved with last year (while doing a bit of consulting on the side) where there were over 400 individual functionality requests for a reservation system….. which I summarised down to 30 or 40 business requirements that were much more understandable.

I still haven’t quite worked out what the best approach is - except to look at developments on a case by case basis. This, as a strategy, isn’t ideal and I am sure people cleverer than me could come up with a better way of solving this dilemma.

I have written previously about how Virgin and Thomson both have “recently selected products” or “recently visited pages” integrated tightly with their holiday search engines on their websites. (see previous post)

This functionality is especially helpful when visitors make repeat visits (perhaps over a couple of weeks during the research phase for a travel product purchase) - as on subsequent visits the user’s experience can be improved by actions made by that user on previous visits.

Anyway, I have just come across an experiment that Google are currently running which achieves something similar. I can’t find the experiment in their labs - so it seems that this is a non-public public experiment. Their experiment focuses on letting users vote a result off a page - or to the top of a set of search results.

Google experiment page

Quoting Google (thanks Google!)…….

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

How do I use it?

Like it?
This button (fig. 1b) will move the result to the top of the page and add this orange marker  (fig. 1a) next to it so you can easily recognize it. The result(s) you promote will appear at the top whenever you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

Don’t like it?
This button (fig. 1b) will remove the result, and it will remain hidden when you search for the same keyword(s) in the future.

Is it permanent?
Your changes will be applied each time you search for the same keyword(s). There’s a link at the bottom of the search results that lets you view the results in their original ordering.

This feels a bit like the voting buttons that were (still are) available via the Google Toolbar……

How could we apply this idea to a travel website?
On a flight or holiday search website, for example, you could vote off an individual result (or perhaps an entire destination) - and then - on this visit and on subsequent visits - come back to the travel website and see results you are interested in.

This will help the user (because they get more results they are interested in) and it could help the travel website as you can see more data on what people really like (and don’t like).

I don’t know of any ecommerce sites that let you do this at the moment? Anyone know of one?

I have done my fair share of “consulting” in the past. I even might describe myself as an ecommerce consultant from time to time (including on this blog!) - however mainly my client work has been as an external contractor (with the main difference between a consultant and a contractor being who owns the intellectual property to work undertaken on behalf of a client - consultants do - contractors don’t - the 2nd difference being a few hundred dollars on the day rate)

One of the best ways of generating new business as a consultant is to tell someone they have a problem - because naturally people then want to pay to get their problem solved. This is why I am not very good at consultant marketing because I really don’t like to tell people about problems they are already probably aware of - also I consider it a bit patronising for me to say “did you know you could do this better” - as there is probably a valid reason why they haven’t done it that way in the first place….

As a consultant I tend to get brought in when someone needs a solution - not when someone wants to know if they have any problems or not. Besides, currently I limit myself to a maximum of 1 day a week doing consulting with the rest of my time solving my own business challenges - not other people’s problems!

Sometimes I see other consultants raising this whole “you have a problem, pay us to fix it” and I cringe. The name for this is FUD - raising fear, uncertainty and doubt. Today I read FUD in this weeks Travel Weekly (4th Jan 08 edition).

The consultant who wrote the Travel Weekly article was the Chief Executive of Logan Tod - an ecommerce consultancy with a handful of travel industry clients (UK). I quote:

Typically for every 100 visits to a travel website only one or two result in a booking

OK - so far so good. This is a factual statement that is probably about right. If you do your analysis against unique visitors over a month (rather than visits over a month) your conversion percentage could be higher - but this is standard numbers for a “travel website” (no indication if this is a holiday, a commodity or transport product - or leisure or business travel - so quite a general statement as indicated by the word typically)

However, it is the next sentence that wound me up!

Companies cannot allow this situation to continue, especially when part of the solution is so simple 

What?! This makes it sound like everyone with a simple flip of a switch can solve the problem! That must be the power of consultants! Where is this switch? :)

Is low booking conversion really a problem?
One reason why companies can let this situation continue is that conversion is the WRONG measure. Frankly I only care about whether the customer / user, on an individual site visit, achieved their goal when they first arrived on the site. Very few visits to a travel website set out with a goal of buying a product. Many users just want to check availability, undertake destination research, find the customer service contact details etc….. a low booking conversion doesn’t immediately indicate that there is a critical issue with the performance of a website…..

A second reason that I don’t like booking conversion as a metric is that the modern trend on travel websites is to provide more information - and sometimes even community features (like a forum, blog etc) - and this will make your conversion percentage fall. However, I would prefer to convert 2% of 30,000 visits than 4% of 10,000 visits. I wrote about this previously 

Should every travel website search like Kayak.com?

 See Kayak.co.uk for a modern search interface that works better than almost everything else in the industry

Of course, the Travel Weekly article is right - many travel websites can do with a bit of improvement here or there - however I wouldn’t describe the redesign process as simple. Neither would I describe the search process on Kayak.com as the desired design outcome for every single travel website.

For example niche travel companies may want to NOT have a website that looks like they have spent a hundred thousand dollars on it (Kayak will have cost a lot more than that!)….. because maybe the customer is looking for a local operator with specialist knowledge - and customers correlate small companies with having the best product knowledge.

One mistake that I have seen medium sized travel companies make online is to try to make themselves look like a large travel dot com - and end up getting into trouble when they compete with the big beasts - so there are good reasons not to look like Kayak!

Tim Hughes over on The BOOT (a blog about the online travel business) has come up with 4 quick rules for success for a travel content focussed website:

1: Content - Lots of it
2: Index - a fantastic Google friendly index and expertise in search engine optimisation
3: Access methods- varying ways and means for consumers to access the content
4: Patience - time (and money) for the traffic to build.

These are great rules. I would add a few more:

5: Create the right environment where people want to publish their own content via your site. Instead of hiring 10 writers (or photographers), convince people (through the power of community) that the benefits of putting their content on your site outweigh the time it will take them (For example, if you are a travel photo website - then you need to create more benefit for a user to post their holiday photos on your website than on someone else’s, or versus just chucking photos on a CD and putting them in the post to family members)

6: Distribution to other websites - Once you have content - let it free to travel around the web…… this may either be full content - or a “taster”, bringing people back to your central website.

7: Keep it fresh - content goes stale quickly. You need to be constantly revisiting old content to check it is still correct. Even better, get your users to alert you to old or stale content.

8: Don’t monetise through CPM advertising - but “something else”. Try selling things. If its great content (and can’t be found anywhere else), then try a subscription model.

9: Let people manipulate content on your site - One reason people may want to come to your site is how they can alter the content around what they want to do. If you have lots of data about different holidays that people can take in a certain destination - let people create travel itineraries using this data - which can be shared between friends etc.

10: Do one thing well - rather than everything at a top level. For example do one destination at an amazing level of detail - rather than an entire country (or the globe). Perhaps instead of creating an entire tool box, you should create a hammer, a screwdriver etc….. but make the best hammers, the best screwdrivers….. let someone else create the saw and the tape measure.

11: Track what people are doing on your website with your content - you may be able to understand trends from this - and these trends may have commercial value to travel companies. If you start getting lots of people researching a new kind of travel via your site - this data may be interesting to a travel company.

12: Decide if you are going to be “expert lead” or “user lead” (and then stick to it). If you are an expert on a topic - then somehow expose this expertise - but without doing so in such a way that a less expert (but knowledgeable) person could come and “borrow” your ideas and information. If you are user lead (by community) then stick with that. If you can join both together you could have a powerful combination.

13: Try to create content that is “all year round” - For example will people just be looking for content when they are thinking of researching their trip - or when buying - or just before travel - or post travel when they want to remind themselves what it was like. Many travel websites focus on the research side of travel….. but tend to forget about all the other opportunities. You may think this conflicts with rule 10 - do one thing well - but unless you are all year round - your revenue stream may not be constant over the year - which can lead either to believe you are doing wonderfully - or that your website is never going to work.

14: I prefer content (or any business) that is based around need rather than around desire - Travel (as a holiday) is normally desire based (but once you have decided to go on holiday, you may need to know certain information). However business travel is often need based. You need to go to a particular meeting in a particular city. Its often easier to create a commercial model based around the principle of need.

15: Get your copyrights sorted out - If you are employing writers, get agreements in place. If users are creating the content for you - what reuse rights do you have? If in 2 years time you want to publish a book - or make a video - can you use the content? What happens if you receive an offer to put your content on another website? Are you covered for that or would you have to renegotiate with your users / writers?

Any more rules?