Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Internet usage statistics’ Category

I’ve already got web analytics on my site, thanks

Given that the team behind Tracking Tourism have recently become Scotland’s first Google Analytics Authorised Consultants (and are one of only six firms in the UK with this accolade to our name), it seemed natural enough that this week’s post would have something of a web measurement feel to it.  Because we’re jolly happy about our achievements.  Because we (quite literally) have the T Shirt - as modelled here so fetchingly by me.

And because while we’re finding that more and more businesses have the tools to allow them to undertake analysis, we have the sneaking suspicion that having the tools and using them for meaningful actions are two different things.

Imagine a tourism business networking event, not very far from you.  Two strangers strike up conversation:

Tourism Business: “So, what do you do?”

Stephen (or Vicky): “Well, we deliver customer insight and web analytics services”

Tourism Business: “We already have Google Analytics/Urchin/Nedstat thank you very much”

Stephen (or Vicky): “And what has your business done differently on account of the information that has given you?”

Tourism Business: “……”

OK, we do sometimes make better conversation than that - but the point remains.  Using a web analytics tool and simply owning a web analytics tool are not the same thing.

The answer to your unique business question doesn’t come just because you got Google Analytics, Omniture or any other measurement tool.  A basic report or a dashboard is not analysis - on its own it cannot give you the answers you need to take action to improve your business.  Sadly, (or happily if, like us, you really really love this kind of thing) - web analytics isn’t ’something you’ve got, thanks’, its something you do.

Getting buy-in to real web analytics

OK, it’s something that we’ve banged on about in the past.  The theme of measuring your website is something that we’re spent a lot of time writing about  on Tracking Tourism (click here for all previous stories).

But despite our humble efforts, you probably still know colleagues, companies and possible even bosses who don’t see the “what’s in it for me” of really using online data to drive the business.

So here are five reasons you can use to convince the unenlightened that job security, profits and heck, near-nirvana, are likely to flow when you take your data seriously - and then do something with it.

1. Show them the money (and the glory)

People that run organisations spend a lot of time caring about where money is being made, saved and lost.  They are typically less interested in page tags, page views and referrer strings.  Buy-in to real analytics comes when it is framed in terms that relate to revenue.

And this doesn’t just apply to big business - every website with a commercial objective makes a contribution to money earned, money saved and yes, it also involves money being spent, either literally or in terms of time.  Real web-analytics is used to drive improvements in the efficiency of those costs.

So at its very simplest, don’t stop at reporting that there were 500 brochure downloads from the site this month - follow it through to its revenue implications.  We posted 500 fewer mail packs, saving £5,000 and can anticipate an additional 50 calls to the booking line in the next 2 weeks.And glory?  Well that relates to performance against competitors.  Unsurprisingly, revealing insight about this will also generate more excitement and action than reports about page views.

2. Show them the customer

The online customer can be perceived as more mysterious - even sinister - compared to its offline counterpart, despite the fact that they are often one and the same.  All the little things you observe about real world visitors seem to vanish online.  You do not even know if the “right people” are even finding your website.

But smart web analytics can help build a picture of the customer online.  For example, it can inform you about the vocabulary and intent of visitors to your site.  You can see the language and words customers use when thinking about you - something that is significant in an intelligent marketing campaign and to search engine optimisation.

Building pictures of real people, real customers - who just happen to be in the online phase of what will often become a real world relationship - can be very useful in breaking down fear and resistance in businesses wary of further web investment.  It can also reveal the shocking implications of poor customer experience online.  Which leads us too….

3. Show them real people walking away

If 99% of your visitors fell out of the back of the bus en-route to your business, week after week, wouldn’t you be as mad as hell?  There may be choice words to be had with the bus operator.  Someone would probably declare that “something must be done.”

And if the same is happening online?  If 99% of visitors are “falling out of the site” without making an enquiry, day after day.  Shouldn’t something be done about that too?  Smart web analytics demonstrates where people are leaving on mass, which pages are under-performing - but it also informs the actions and tests to improve those pages.  And, of course, it informs the financial cost of inaction.

4. Show cause and effect

Basic analysis tells you how people are finding your website site.  Good analytics tells you whether the money you are spending on marketing, promotions and SEO campaigns is actually making you money.  It tells you whether your actions are creating the desired effects.On the flip side, it can also reveal how your actions (or inactions) are costing you business, impacting your search engine visibility or causing your marketing expenditure to be wasted.

5. Show them the future

The very best analytics doesn’t just look backwards, it looks forwards. It attempts to use visitor behaviour, customer satisfaction and search trends to inform advance decision about promotional expenditure, staffing and priorities.

For example, with one of our clients, we have found a direct correlation between visits to specific pages of their website and physical visits to their attraction 5 days later.  A big peak in visits to those website pages means they can expect more people than usual on Saturday - which means opening the overflow carpark and bringing in more staff.

At a more simplistic level, if you knew that the peak time of the year for Google searches for weddings in Gretna Green was July, would you wait until September to advertise these packages on your website?  By staying ahead of the customer activity cycle, you predict the future to your marketing advantage.

Getting to the big-wins

If your reluctant friend is now convinced of the value of data, how do they get started on the path to true enlightenment?  Well, first get the data set-up right - by ensuring every page is tagged correctly, that filters are in place etc.  All things we’ve written about before.  Not one of the sites I have checked in the last two weeks has had every page of their website correctly tagged - and what you get in that scenario is garbage in, garbage out as they say.

Then focus on measuring the right questions for your business - what really matters and what do you need to measure in order to track that. Who needs convincing and what is the best way to report to achieve that.  And don’t lose sight of people in the numbers.  Tourism and hospitality are people focussed industries - don’t lose the customer in a sea of reporting.  Use the data to get closer to the customer and how the business is delivering on their needs.

Buy-in help or training if you need it - you don’t delay fixing the hot water because no one on your team is a plumber.  You get one in, or someone gets packed off to night school to learn.  Fast.  The same has to apply to web analytics - it is simply too important to the business bottom line to languish for a few years until someone magically figures out how to do it.  There is expertise out there (hint, hint) - it probably makes financial sense to use it.

And that near-nirvana I mentioned?  That occurs when you create a business culture where analysis is in the DNA.   And for the unconvinced, these businesses do exist.  More importantly they exist in the travel, hospitality and tourism sector.  Travelocity is one, but they can be the very smallest of businesses as well as the very large. They’re probably those same guys eating into everyone else’s market share right now.

If analytics is something you do, not something you get, then how do you do it?

Funny you should ask….  Next week’s eMetrics Summit in San Jose, California, kicks off with an analysis symposium to tackle that very question.  I will be one of the presenters charged with distilling all my best thoughts and tips on “how to analyse” into just 10 minutes each!  For me, it really promises to be the analytics highlight of recent years as I believe we have focussed for far too long on smart tools, not smart thinking.

To quote my friend and eMetrics Summit guru Jim Sterne as he re-mixes the Wizard of Oz:

“Why, anybody can have data. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth, or slinks through slimy seas has data!  Back where I come from we have Summits - gatherings of great learning - where people go to learn how to analyze that data.

And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and leverage their marketing investment, and with no more data than you have.  But - they have one thing you haven’t got - a ticket to the eMetrics Analysis Symposium!”

Its not to late to get your analysis symposium ticket here.

And if sunny California (or eMetrics London in a few weeks time) or the thinking great thoughts can’t tempt you, those of you in Scotland are welcome to attend a free Web Analytics Wednesday networking event in Glasgow for some drinking and chatting instead.  It take places this Wednesday 29th April and you can register to attend here.  Stephen and I hope to see some of you there!

Posted by Vicky

Travel and tourism research highlights - What have we learned in 2008?

It’s Christmas.  Time for peace and goodwill.  Hope and joy.

So lets put travel sector doom and gloom aside for a moment. There’s cheer to be found in reviewing our knowledge nugget collection! All those things that have been learned about digital tourism and online travel trends that we didn’t know this time last year.

With the help of all those smart analysts and researchers out there, I am determined to deliver you some  hope and joy in the form of information, insight and illumination.

Here are my four travel and tourism research picks from 2008 - and it is not all bad news.

1) Hitwise reports that the Economic downturn is benefiting budget Travel and Cruise companies.  They explain:

UK Internet traffic to travel websites fell by 4.6% between September 2007 and September 2008, but certain sectors are thriving despite, or in some cases because of, the squeeze on household budgets.

UK Internet visits to budget travel providers, such as EasyJet, Ryanair and Travelodge, increased by 5.3% between September 2007 and September 2008, while the websites of Cruise companies experienced an 8.2% increase in traffic over the same period.

In the same report, they make another interesting and useful observation.  Internet users aged 55+ have continued to flood online and are now the largest group of visitors to travel sector websites:

Internet users aged 55+ now account for 27.3% of UK Internet visitors to Travel websites, making them the largest group of visitors to the industry. The over 45s are the fastest growing demographic for Travel websites, and their tastes are different from younger Internet users. They are more likely to book through agencies than go directly to airline or hotel websites……the section of the online travel industry that most over-indexes with older Internet users is Cruises. Almost 60% of visitors to Cruise websites are aged 55+, with a further 16% coming from the 45-54 age group.

Doesn’t that bring you some hope and joy?  Your online activities need not, must not be regarded as a niche sideline.  Online travel content consumpion is now mainstream to market segments of all ages and all distribution preferences  - for research, direct booking and booking via agents.
2) Despite the disatisfaction consumers have expressed with some travel sites (just last year Forsee reported that the online users were more satisfied with tax than airline websites) it is not all bad news.

JupiterResearch has found that the majority of online travelers believe researching travel online is easier now than ever before, with user-generated content now more influential on the choice of accommodation than brand among online accommodation researchers.

In their US Online Travel Consumer Survey, 2008 (reported in more depth in this Tracking Tourism post) Jupiter found that:

“the 42 percent of online travelers using user-generated content consider the opinions of other travelers to be highly trusted and influential in both accommodation and destination choices”.

For those using user generated content,  reviews/ratings from other travellers were a major influence in the decision making process (after price and location).  36% named user generated content as an influential factor in their decision, compared to 21% citing brand/reputation and 14% citing that old chestnut of family/friend recommendation.

While specific sites, social networks and communities may rise and wane in popularity, the role of reviews and ratings and “real user” validation seems here to stay for the tourism and travel sector.

3) Comscore reported that “mobile search is gaining in both popularity and frequency of use in the U.S. and Western Europe” with the implication that a much heralded shift in behaviour is finally underway, with associated opportunities for those able to capitalise on it.

comScore M:Metrics reported that “in June 2008, 20.8  million U.S. mobile subscribers and 4.5 million European mobile phone subscribers  accessed search during the month, an increase of 68 and 38 percent from June 2007, respectively.  The U.K. had the highest penetration of mobile subscribers using search at 9.5 percent, followed closely by the U.S. at 9.2 percent.”

Their analyst, Alistair Hill clarified the relevance of theis, explaining:

“It is interesting to note that as we see the number of mobile search users increase, the frequency of activity is also growing….. The number of people accessing mobile search at least once a week grew 50 percent in Europe, with France and Spain leading at a rate of 69 and 63 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. users accessing mobile search has more than doubled as a result of expanded 3G penetration and smartphone adoption, as well as the proliferation of flat-rate data plans.”

As we reported in Tracking Tourism, consumer behaviour is changing and tourism businesses can no longer assume that no one visits their site by phone (or Wii or TV for that matter).  With shifting behaviour comes opportunity for those ready to adapt.

4) PhoCusWright did some much needed myth debunking in The Consumer Travel Trends Tenth Edition. Not only did they show that the number of online travel buyers was not declining, they also showed that all is not lost for online travel agencies.

The assumption that it is only supplier sites that benefits from online travel shoppers, or that people preferring agents are flooding offline, is challenged by their research, which shows that online travel agencies are making a comeback in terms of popularity.

Read more of their myth busting here.

So, its not all doom and gloom.  There is hope.  There is opportunity.

On that note, seasons greetings and a happy new year from Stephen and Vicky at Tracking Tourism.

Post by Vicky

Using Google Insight for tourism and travel research

I recently wrote a post on using Google Trends for tourism and travel insight and this post expands on some of those themes by talking about the Google Insight product.

Before I do so, it might be as well to remind ourselves of the difference between Google Trends and Google Insight.  As I noted in the previous post, “…Google Trends shows data relating to traffic to websites while Google Insight shows data related to search terms.”

So, in a nutshell, Google Insight offers a great way of understanding how people search for particular terms and, more importantly,  the contexts in which they do it.  For a tourism destination, for example, this means that it is possible to judge where your destination lies in comparison to competitor destinations and whether there are opportunities to broaden your market offering.  For a specific tourism or travel business, you can capitalise on the fact that brand names are increasing dominating searches in order to see where you stack up against competitor businesses.

It’s probably best to illustrate this with a concrete example and for this I’m going to look at some tourism businesses in Aviemore, a destination that offers year round outdoor activities close to where I live.  I’m going to concentrate on two businesses - the Aviemore Highland Resort and the Hilton Aviemore. I have selected these two simply because they are both large hotels, they both cater for a similar clientèle and they both undertake marketing expenditure.

Inputting the brand search terms ‘aviemore highland resort’ and ‘hilton aviemore’ brings up results that look like this (or click on the image below for a larger version).  I’ve applied filters to the results so that I receive data based on the relative popularity of the two search terms from people within the UK in the period Jan 07 through to October 08.

You can see from this graph that the two hotels pretty much shadowed each other up until about July this year when the Aviemore Highland Resort started to drift away downwards from the Aviemore Hilton.  Now, there have been periods of divergence before but this recent period strikes me as being longer lasting and deeper than previous splits so, if I were Aviemore Highland Resort, I would now have concrete proof that for some reason, I was no longer making as big an impact when compared to my close rivals. As such, I would either know why (eg marketing budgets might have been changed) or I would be starting to ask serious questions to find out why.

Move from assumptions to proof

But now let’s introduce another search term into the mix to get an idea of whether it’s more a case that the Hilton is performing exceptionally rather than the Highland Resort performing poorly.

In this example, I’ve introduced the term ‘Aviemore Hotels’ as my benchmark term.  Whereas the previous terms are brand terms - and likely used for navigational search by people who are already aware the establishments exist,  ‘Aviemore Hotels’ is a more open search term that requires no knowledge of existing brands in the area.  Therefore it is more of a general benchmark indicator of the broader level of interest in hotels in the area. The result is shown in the graph below (click for a larger version or visit Google Insight here).

One thing that you should notice quickly is that the Hilton seems to trend more closely with the ‘Aviemore Hotels’ line than the Aviemore Highland resort does.  Indeed, the raw data enables us to determine that there is a stronger statistically provable correlation between ‘Aviemore Hilton’ and ‘Aviemore Hotels’ than between ‘Aviemore Highland Resort’ and ‘Aviemore Hotels’. In other words, the Hilton is performing in line with the market and the Highland resort less so.

Incidentally, even if we take the figures for Aviemore Highland Resort in isolation, using the raw data (available if you have a Google Account), we can see that the term ‘aviemore highland resort’ is now performing outside of control limits (defined as standard deviation x 3 - see more here about control limits) as shown in the graph below.

As virtually all web sites have cycles, we should expect to see some changes throughout the year but this suggests that the current change lies outside of what might be expected within these cycles:

So what does this mean?

For the Aviemore Highland Resort it means something may be wrong, beyond the level of a mere seasonal wobble.

My first actions would be to look at spend, bookings and occupancy data to see if there has been a corresponding drop in revenues.  (Afterall we are just talking about search activity here!)

I would look in depth at web traffic and conversions to identify which visitor segments and traffic sources I have lost search activity and potential business from.    I would also look closely at marketing activity and assess whether a drop in advertising spend has lead to this drop in search volume - and whether there is a cost effective way of rectifying that.  Afterall, it is common for people to respond to TV and other forms of offline activity by going online and searching on the brand name.  Is this what is occurring here - and does it even matter to the bottom line?  I’d want to know.

And if I were the Hilton Aviemore?  Well, I be heading off to Google Trends and comparing our overall website traffic for clues.  I’d be looking at my revenue and web analytics data to see if I was benefiting from this displaced search activity - and whether I was converting it into revenue.  And I would bullishly be looking at what I was doing right and be tempted to invest in doing more of the same.

So, Google Insight - used wisely - has the power to act as warning device for your business.  It’s free (and this article has only really touched on a small number of its features), so can you afford to ignore it?

Filed by Stephen (03/12/08)

Google’s business model is simple. It wants you to spend your money wisely on Google business products and, to help you achieve those ends, there are tools to make your spending decisions more informed.

Looked at from another angle, they offer a bunch of tools that you and I can use free of charge.

This post forms part of a series over the next few weeks that will show you how to make the most of tools like this - as well asking some more probing questions about how far they can really help you.

This post originated in a question I asked myself recently, “what exactly does the tool data in Google Trends and Google Insight show and what has this got to do with travel and tourism?”

At a top level, the answer is quite simple. Google Trends shows data relating to traffic to websites while Google Insight shows data related to search terms. However, what they have the potential to give you is considerable and so for this post, I’ll talk just about Google Trends, followed in the future by Google Insights and then finally a post dealing with some more ‘philosophical’ questions these tools have thrown up.

What is Google Trends showing and why is it useful?

OK, let’s start with Google Trends. If you click here, you’ll open up a new window with Google Trend data for visitscotland.com. At this point, you’ll see a graph showing daily unique visitors to the visitscotland.com site over a period of about 2 years. You’ll also see a bunch of data below it. Let’s look at those two elements in turn.

Before I get going though, I would like to stress that I’m using visitscotland.com here as an example only. The point of this is to look at data for your own site (assuming you have sufficient traffic) and to use the techniques contained in this post.

The graph shows a representation of the number of times visitscotland.com has been called up via Google. Note that this is not searches for visitscotland.com in a search box but rather the number of times someone has visited the site and Google has been in a position to capture that data (with some caveats).

Now, this graph can show a lot more but I want to mention the lower half of the screen before getting into that as it is where the data starts to get really interesting.

On the left, you get an indication of where the visitors to visitscotland.com and coming from. In other words, you can see by geography where the warmest prospects are.

In the middle, you can see which other sites were also visited alongside visitscotland.com. In our example, you can see sites ranked that you might expect to see - and depending on your perspective, this might be comforting or unsettling. For example, if you saw visitireland.com as the most visited other site, you would know that there was a real fight at this level to attract visitors who were torn between destinations.

And on the right hand side, you see the search terms that are most often associated with that site. Again, this might be revealing or comforting. For example, if you run a website for a DMO in a whisky distillery town and people find you only by the brandname of your whisky and not under something more generic like ‘whisky tourism scotland’, then this would be a sign that your site isn’t attracting as many visitors as it could.

But the fun really starts because you can start to compare sites.

Let’s demonstrate this by taking our example above and adding a few more sites - visitbritain.com and visitsweden.com. It should now look like this.

Let’s start with the graph. It shows that visitscotland.com attracts more visitors than visitbritain.com or visitsweden.com. It also shows that visitscotland has different peaks and troughs to the other sites at a global level (predominantly the effect of Hogmanay I would guess).

In the bottom half of the screen, you’ll see that you can segment this data by region and by website. You’ll notice that under the ‘ranked by’ tab, you’ll see how each geographic area performs for each of these sites. You’ll notice in our example how Scotland and Sweden are broadly similar in terms of interest in Germany. If, in the upper right of the screen, you use the drop-down box to change ‘all regions’ to ‘Germany’, you should see something like this.

So what’s this saying? It’s saying that, in this instance, people in Germany have show a greater propensity to visit the visitscotland.com site at a different time to the visitsweden site. That might be on account of a campaign by visitscotland in Germany…or it might just show a different ‘natural’ search pattern (and I’ll show you in a coming post how you can go about finding that out). If we assume on this occasion that German’s simply are more interested in visitscotland.com at the periods suggested, wouldn’t it make sense to have the website ready to react to this niche interest at the time? The data suggests that it might be wrong to assume that people think of destinations in a uniform way and that you need to be ready to respond to the customer when they actually come calling, not when you think they ought to be calling.

Conversely, if the spike was the result of an advertising campaign, this gives an indication of how long its effect lasted and how big it was in comparison to the spike caused by possible competitor marketing.

(I’ll hasten to add, I’m not passing judgment on visitscotland.com but just using them as an example - for all I know they might well be doing all this already!)

What I’ve described rather quickly in this post is one, powerful view that the travel and tourism industry can use to get a deeper understanding of how it sits in the online world. But, as is often the case, you need to look at other areas in order to build upper a more mature understanding and so this represents just one part of the picture. In the coming weeks, we’ll develop this theme further with more tips on these free tools.

See post 2 in this series - Warning bells you can’t afford to ignore: courtesy of Google Insights

Further reading:

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Trends for Websites

“No one visits my site on their mobile phone…do they?”

As a researcher I shouldn’t deal in anecdote but, ignoring that cardinal rule, recent conversations suggest to me that tourism organizations and business are becoming more aware of the potential of people to access their internet sites by phone. However, while they know that this is a forthcoming issue, they remain unconvinced that this is something that they need to worry about just yet.

So, the purpose of this post is to give a primer into how you can tell if people are already accessing your site by mobile devises as well as some of the important issues about how this could develop and what the development of this method of customer’s accessing your site.

Before, I do so, I would like to thank the good folks at the Web Analytics Association for their recent seminar, “Measuring Web 2.0 Technologies Part 2” on which this post is largely based. That seminar is only available for WAA members to access but, if you are not yet a member and you have a serious interest in web analytics, do check the site out anyway.

Anyhow, I thought I would initially structure this post as a question and answer session before moving on to the issue more generally. I suspect that there are a lot of people that need to cover the basics before we look at some of the wider issues.

• Are people already visiting my site by mobile device?

The answer to that is, probably, yes.

• How can I tell?

The way to tell is the way that tell whether anyone has accessed your site: go and look at your web stats.

Specifically, you need to look through your web stats data to see if specific operating systems have been used to access your site.

Now, I am making the assumption here that you have something like Google Analytics or equivalent on your site (if you are the kind of business looking at raw log file data, then this article is probably too advanced or too basic for your needs!). If you are using Google Analytics, choose ‘Visitors/Operating Systems’ and you will get data on how people are accessing your site. The first three entries will probably be Windows, Mac and then Linux but if you go through the whole list, you might find some odd entries and some these will be people accessing your site on mobile devices.

I’ve ringed the entries on the image on the right (click on the image to enlarge) that are evidence (in this single example) of mobile device being used to access a single site.

• Wait a minute, why do you say ‘mobile device’ and not just ‘mobile phone’?

Well, look at the last entry on that list - it’s for a Playstation portable so it’s not just phones we are talking about here.

• How reliable is this information for showing my all the people who came to the site via mobile device?

At present, products like Google Analytics will not pick up visits from most common types of phones. It only really picks up people using ’smartphones.’

• What’s the difference between a smart phone and a normal mobile phone and why does this matter?

A smart phone is the kind of mobile with more advanced capabilities, like Blackberries or iPhones (see here for more details). I don’t have figures but they’re probably the minority of phones used just now but represent what we’ll all be using (in some modified form) soon enough. The reason it matters is that the evidence for website usage you will see will probably be for these sorts of phones.

For the moderately techie among you, this can be explained by the fact that smartphones are often javascript enabled whereas other phones are not and web analytics products like Google Analytics need javascript to be working on your system for their page tags to work.

• Can I track the same customer as they visit my site by phone and web?

Not really. Most solutions will see these as two separate visits and not realize that those two visits are made by the same person. You could get round this by getting people to log on each time they visited but, unless you have a compelling reason to do this, I think it might just be elevating the collection of stats over the user experience.

• OK, so I might have visitors coming to my site by mobile phone - so what?

Put simply, people will use your site differently through a mobile device than through a desk computer. This means that, in order to deliver what they want when they come to your site, you need to be aware of how they are acting in this different environment. For example, page can take longer to download, screens are smaller and some of the programs you take for granted on you computer might not be available on your phone.

So, if you want a site optimised for mobiles the first recommendations would be to look through your stats to see how mobile users are using your site. From this, most other decisions will flow in terms of content. The advice from industry leaders in the WAA seminar was simple enough: Once you see evidence of web usage by mobiles on your site, dig deeper and see what they are doing.

Are mobile users looking for specific content? Certain information may be particularly associated with phone usage - maps, directions, booking references for example - but look at your own web analytics data back up those assumptions. People may be using your site differently by phone. You can also factor in how long are they on the site (bearing in mind a long time does not always indicate a successful experience, but often a frustrating visit).

Some other suggestions I would have include:

• ditch any large graphic files;
• ditch the background music on the entry page (actually, just do this anyway);
• make it easy for the customer to get to where they want to go to - on a mobile, time is money and I don’t want to waste either;
• the mobile experience is more often about ‘just in time’ information rather than gathering a body of research - deliver accordingly;
• is what you are delivering commensurate with the mobile devices capabilities? For example, if you were delivering music samples via your site, you would need to know how big these could be.
• And developing that example: many mobiles do have MP3 players built in as well as cameras - can you take advantage of this somehow?

To round up, I can almost guarantee that the visitors to your website are using a broader range of devices than simply PCs and laptops. They may currently only be a small group - but they may represent a very valuable one. Its worth starting to look for them in your data so you can plan accordingly.

Further reading:Sunday Night Thinking on Mobile Analytics…

How do we know whether our social media, user generated content or online marketing activity is working? Should we spend or save? Those are questions that it is my job to answer - yet the right answer is not always clear cut.

And in just a few weeks I will be speaking about measuring user generated content in travel at the Munich Eye For Travel conference. So rather than present a single slide containing “It depends” - I thought I would thrash out some of my ideas here and hopefully also get some of your thoughts and experiences on measuring user generated content.

It all depends on purpose

Understanding if something is working depends entirely on purpose - after all what is a successful outcome? If I was using my car as a giant garden plant pot, success would be very different in my eyes than if I was trying to drive the vehicle to the South of France.

Intent and purpose determine what success should look like. And what success looks like determines the frame of reference for measuring if you’ve achieved it. First define what matters - only then you can try and measure it.

So, before we can even think about what to measure, we have to address why a travel business might interact with user generated content in the first place. I have defined the following likely purposes - I’d be interested to hear if you think there are more:

• Direct response advertising & marketing - I want people to see this content and take a specific action now;

• Brand awareness advertising & marketing - I want people to see this content, be aware of my existence and respond to my brand/product/destination in a positive way;

• Customer, brand, market and competitor research - I want to gather intelligence I can use for strategic decisions;

• Advocacy, champion and customer get customer marketing - I want to capitalise on the great experiences of previous customers/travellers in order to influence the decisions of future potential customers; and

• Leverage (should this be distinct? - I’m not convinced) - I want to capitalise on the efforts/activities of others to achieve exposure I could not otherwise afford to buy.

The success of activity has to be measured entirely in terms of the context of these goals. There’s a big difference, for example, between trying to use You Tube for direct response marketing and using it for customer research. The same measures simply cannot be applied to both.

Is brand and direct response activity really any different, just because its on a UGC site?

If an advertiser is simply pushing its message out, but that advertising happens to be placed on a UGC site, I don’t see how that is significantly different to any other media placement.  So, if the goal of the activity is purely as a direct response campaign, then I would judge success based on marketing ROI, just like any other. I would tag the campaign and specific landing pages, looking ultimately to ensure that the revenue return from the campaign referrals exceeded the expenditure. In a complex, high spend advertising environment, or with pure brand activity, I would certainly consider working with a tool (such as Microsoft’s which is explained well here) that maps a consumer’s ad-clicking history over weeks before making a purchase, rather than assuming the very last thing they clicked before conversion was the only trigger.

However, I don’t see brand and direct response advertising in user generated content environments as offering any particularly unique challenges in terms of measurement philosophy. Is a pure brand video ad on You Tube really so very different in purpose and desired outcomes to one on CNN? While I do believe “its brand advertising” is often trotted out as an excuse not to measure effectiveness properly (and that is another post entirely!) it doesn’t seem to me that the actual measurement issues for ads placed onto UGC sites are ultimately that different from measuring brand issues in other other medium.

My personal interest in better understanding points 3, 4 and 5 of above - customer research, customer advocacy and profile leverage.

Measuring UGC for customer, brand, market and competitor research

Whether you talk about online user generated content or offline customer feedback, from comment cards to text messaging - the real challenge for travel and tourism has never been about simply collecting customer feedback, but rather understanding it to identify the real issues, enable you to prioritize and take actions that contributes both to customer experience and bottom line.

However, when I ask people how they action the feedback they get from UGC and social media, I frequently hear “we have a tool that does that”. That is not actioning the feedback - that is just capturing the feedback. Action requires listening (not just ‘hearing’), understanding and implementing.

For example, social media and buzz monitoring tools offer the opportunity to hear those conversations but like any tool, they require attention, analysis and action on the part of the organisation or they are meaningless.

So I would measure the value of UGC for research purposes, not in terms of how much raw data was accumulated or how many mentions (positive or negative) I had, I would even want to move past understanding if I was tracking generally upwards or downwards in terms of buzz. Instead, if I wanted to understand the value of UGC to the business bottom line, I would measure it in terms of actionable outcomes that resulted from the information.

So, this could be:

• A simple quantitative record of UGC inspired actions
• The estimated value of stopping a conversion leak - eg, we contributed £XXXX to the bottom line by fixing this conversion problem now, not a year down the line
• Money saved on conventional research or data collection activity (though beware, as I would see it as enhancing not entirely replacing existing research activity)
• Uplift in specific satisfaction points, as a result of actioning UGC feedback, and therefore uplift in future intent to recommend/purchase
• Savings in other cost centers, such as PR, training and call centers

I’ve banged on about it before, but the measures have to pass the ’so what?’ test. For example, if you’ve had 5,000 positive UGC mentions - so what? But if UGC has helped increased revenues by £50,000 a year by fixing the number 1 customer pet hate then a big pat on the back and hopefully a nice bonus too.

Measuring advocacy, champion and customer get customer marketing

Jupiter Research recently found that user generated content is used by 40% on online travel researchers - with ratings and reviews/recommendations dominating. And when it comes to accommodation research, user generated content is nearly twice as influential as brand and almost three times more influential than family/friend recommendation. (See our recent post on this).

Perhaps the most significant and powerful aspect of user generated content is its apparent peer to peer authenticity. The business or tourism organisation treads a fine line here - capitalising on the notion of “don’t take our word for it” whilst ensuring authenticity is not corrupted.

However, capitalising on the reviews, comments, images etc of previous visitors is a profound way to influence the decision of future travelers (provided your product is good). How might you measure success here?

I would say there are four distinct factors to consider:

• Participation levels amongst your target group (visitors, previous customers, locals) in terms of creating reviews, uploading images, submitting ratings

• The sentiment and satisfaction expressed in that UGC

• The influence of that UGC over other potential travellers (ie, is the UGC actually being seen)

• The conversions, actions, revenues resulting from that UGC.

Can these things be joined up to give an indication of the value and impact of UGC on a business or destination? I think so, yes. It won’t necessarily be a seamless piece of analytics and I think it requires creativity, but I know it can deliver some valuable insights that pass the ’so what’ test.

I shall use the example of the Hotel Rival in Stockholm, given that I have written about my entirely UGC influenced stay there last year.

So, looking at participation - with extensive reviews on Tripadvisor, images on Flickr and the like, there is plenty of scope for Hotel Rival to aggregate and analyse this data (see this post on montoring online feedback) and maintain an absolute benchmark or a rolling ratio of customer participation in UGC. At the same time, they will almost certainly want to take this one step further and benchmark satisfaction and sentiment, again readily available in the data - provided some analysis time is put in.

The influence of the UGC over other travelers can be determined, at least in part, by the overall importance of the site in terms of traffic, reputation and awareness. Additionally, responses to the specific UGC (such as favouriting, indicating it was found useful, commenting etc) provides guidance to whether the UGC is influential or ignored.

But does the UGC drive revenue? In an ideal world there’d be a nice easy way to track my referral straight from Flickr into Hotel Rival’s web analytics and reservations engine. Unfortunately, in my real world example I skipped bewteen TripAdvisor, Flickr, the hotel site, Expedia, other agents, before returning to TripAdvisor (probably via Google) and booking through Expedia. Track that with confidence (and yes, that is exactly what the Microsoft engagement mapping platform mentioned earlier tries to do). I’m not sure, apart from the fact that I went to great lengths to tell them, that my booking data alone would have revealed to Hotel Rival’s management the original influence of the UGC.

hmm, if in doubt - ask the customer

So I suggest an alternative. In the post stay survey (or for other business types, during feedback research or during the “how did you hear about us” questioning) directly ask the customer if they were influenced by UGC. Get specific if possible and if you can, tie that to reservations data.

Given that when it comes to accommodation research, user generated content is nearly twice as influential as brand and almost three times more influential than family/friend recommendation - you may want to redistribute you marketing efforts when you learn what is really working.

This is my take on measuring UGC in travel and of course I have my own biases.  I would love to know if and how you are tracking the value or impact of user generated content within your destination or organisation.

No longer can the Internet be viewed just as an add-on to marketing efforts - it is now an integral, critical part of travel distribution.

That was the view expressed by Diane Clarkson, Travel Industry Analysts at Jupiter Research and Bill Tancer, god of all things data at Hitwise, in this evening’s excellent webinar: Travel 2.0 Today, The Economy and the Evolving Travel Landscape.

More critically, Hitwise have found (through their clickstream analysis of internet users as they move from site to site) that traffic to the travel category of websites is actually increasing as people tighten their belts.

There has been no drop in travel website visits as fuel prices increase. People are instead researching their travel decisions more intensively online and are shifting to the online channel as they become more price sensitive.

Internet and online travel becomes more important in tough economic times.
Bill Tancer, Hitwise

Jupiter Research’s data backs this up. Their US Online Travel Consumer Survey from May ‘08 suggest that the next 12 months could see a sharp decline in travel frequency - with 39% of occasional leisure travellers and 43% of occaisional business travellers suggesting that they are planing fewer trips in the coming year. But the impact, Diane explains, is that “the Internet will increasingly become a tool as people research more intensely”.

The business implications of that are immense - while you may have cruised by on a sub-par website in good times, as things toughen up in the sector, people are looking at more websites and so it is critical you can attract and retain visitors on yours.

Bill and Diane’s webinar covered three key topics:

• The impact on travel of the economic downturn
• The impact of user generated content on travel brands and travel consumers
• The potential for travel and social network sites.

They kindly gave permission for their content to be blogged openly, which is much appreciated as it is not always the case with such industry analyst briefings. When the webinar is available online, I will add the link as its really worth a listen. In the meantime here are a few of the conclusions from their respective research efforts that really tingled some brain cells for me:

1. User generated content is used by 40% of online travel researchers

Yup, 40%. Not hardly anyone, or a bunch of geeks, or a few back packing students - but 4 out of 10 of the people researching travel. Jupiter’s US Online Travel Consumer Survey from May ‘08 found that for this 40% using user generated content, ratings were the most popular (used by 58%), followed by reviews and recommendations (49%). Next came user generated photo content (18%) and friend’s social networking websites (18%). Other travellers blogs we consulted by 12% and user generated video by 5%.

The impacts of this? Diane cited the importance of using this content regularly and systematically as a source of competitor intelligence. And as the next point will illustrate, she also highlighted the importance for the contribution of travellers to be included as part of brand strategy. Why? Because user generated content is highly trusted.

2. User generated content is nearly twice as influential as brand to accommodation researchers

User generated content is far more influential than brand or the recommendations of friends and family

After price and location, for those using ugc, reviews/ratings from other travellers was the major influence in the decision making process. 36% named it as an influential factor in their decision, compared to 21% citing brand/reputation and 14% citing that old chestnut of family/friend recommendation. (Source Jupiter as above).

Hitwise’s clickstream data shows that visits to travel user generated content have increased 40% in the year since June 2007. They also reveal (perhaps no surprises) that it is TripAdivsor that is the heavyweight, accounting for more than 75% of the Travel UGC and 2.0 market share. (IgoUgo pales into second at 9.5% and WAYN at 8.4%). Bill made the point that while standalone Travel UGC accounts for only a small fraction of travel visits online (2%), its reach and impact is in fact much wider as people engage in user generated content on traditional travel websites.

3.The Travel 2.0 heavyweights are in the mainstream research to purchase mix

With a graph to die for, Bill combined the flow of clicks from travel site to travel site, with market share of those sites. From this network map, he isolated those sites that are driving traffic to the big OTAs such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.

And a few Travel 2.0 players are having a big impact - TripAdvisor and the metasearch site Kayak and Sidestep. Metasearch, sites that search for price across muliple agency and supplier sites, before sending the search off to another site to book, are faring particularly well in these price sensitive times. Two years ago they were only used by the highly tech savvy, whereas now they are entering the mainstream as people research more intensively for the best prices.

However, what Bill’s uber-graph also shows is that outside these heavyweights, the smaller Travel 2.0 sites (from WAYN to WikiTravel) are very insular, with little cross flow of traffic and are currently outside the mainstream travel research traffic flow.

4. The social networking sites are not impacting as a travel planning resource yet

Jupiter (same source as above) found that only 8% of those online travellers who are using social networking sites do so for travel planning. 56% do not use social networks in any capacity whatsoever that relates to travel. The most common travel related uses come in the form of communication, with 23% looking at friends travel photos or videos, 22% keeping in touch while away and 19% posting photos.

Diane contrasted the high level of trust that people have in stranger generated reviews, which comes from critical mass. People can sift many reviews looking for patterns and things that resonate with them. In contrast, social networks have much lower critical mass.

Hitwise’s data has not seen significant increases in traffic being referred to travel sites from social network sites - Bill suggested that where it is appearing, it is potentially being caused by people that use their social networking site as their homepage.

And different segments and demographic profiles of travel researchers behave in different ways. The 55+ age group are more likely to use newspapers and magazines to find a new travel site that they haven;t used before, whereas younger users are more likely to use meta search. Website visitors, like travellers, can never be thought of as a single homogeneous mass.

So, thanks again to Hitwise and Jupiter Research for a great webinar and for allowing us bloggers to share their findings with the wider industry. I hope I’ve communicated some of the potential power of their data with this short round up.

Absolutely mainstream and absolutely heating up

In case anyone was doubting that the Internet is absolutely mainstream and absolutely critical to travel and tourism, here is my spring pick of statistics that I think deserve some serious attention:

1. Average UK Internet users now spend 164 minutes online each day, compared to 148 minutes spent watching TV. The research by TNS (on behalf of Google) demonstrates how profoundly consumer behaviour is changing online. The Internet is still regarded as some tourism businesses as a niche, somehow still less significant that other channels. The reality is that the Internet is absolutely mainstream and is challenging and surpassing more traditional media types.

2. Jakob Nielsen points out that only 25% of people travel through a site via a homepage - the rest use search and arrive deep in the site. This BBC article tells you more.

What is the implication of this? Well, many people imagine all their visitors arrive through the site’s front door and they design their site accordingly. Time and effort goes on improving the home page, while deeper pages are ignored.

How does your site fare in terms of navigation, clarity and usability for the 75% of people who enter down the chimney and through the windows of the site, rather than though the front door?

3. Google properties now drive 36% of all UK Internet traffic (source Hitwise).

What does this mean to you? Use your web analytics data to understand your share of traffic from Google. If it dramatically exceeds the 40% mark, you may need to look at building other sources of traffic and improving repeat visits to your site. If Google accounts for only a small proportion of your traffic, there may be a need to look at your organic search engine optimisation strategy.

4. comScore reports that in March, 221.2 million Europeans conducted 24.6 billion searches, averaging 111 searches per searcher. Searchers in Finland exhibited the heaviest search activity with 143 searchers per searcher, followed by Portugal (128 searches per searcher) and the U.K. (124 searches per searcher).

Search is critical to your business success online. But for the travel sector, search optimisation and visibility doesn’t stop at your own country activity (such as google.co.uk), as the next statistic shows.

5. comScore also showed that Google Sites account for more than 19 billion European searches conducted in March, representing 79 percent of the European search market.

“With nearly 80 percent of all searches conducted in March, Google is far and away the leading search property in Europe,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore. “However, we are seeing key local players show leadership in Eastern Europe where English is spoken less than in Western markets. With Russia’s online population now the fastest growing in Europe, it is likely that some of these local search engines will continue to gain traction and market share.”

6. 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in March 2008. comScore report that users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during the month, representing a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007. Nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March.

Video is being found to drive travel and tourism conversion rates and consumers are both familiar with using it and increasingly search out accommodation, destination and activity related video as part of their travel research process. They are also uploading their own video reminiscences, which fuel future travellers’ decisions.

7. It’s not just the US that is seeing the impact of video. Hitwise reports that UK traffic to online video increased by 178 per cent between February 2007 and 2008, now accounting for one in every 45 Internet visits.

8. Competition is hotting up and so is online spend. Advertising spending online looks set to overtake spending on TV by the end of 2009 - the implication being that prices will rise as more advertisers chase the same inventory.

9. In 2008 12% (7.4million) of all mobile phone users in the UK are using mobile Internet services (source Continetal Research, on e-consultancy). Forrester Research project this will rise to 38% of mobile phone users in Western Europe by 2013.

This mobile phone based Internet activity often utilises ‘dead time’ while travelling and is associated with ‘task based’ activity such as checking train times, restaurant directions etc. Right now, those handful of sites doing mobile well are in a prime position to see the benefits in their bottom line.

10. As so many of these points suggest, the Internet is now absolutely mainstream for travel.

PhoCusWright’s latest Consumer Travel Trends Survey, due June 2008, reports that requent travellers and seasoned online buyers continue to dominate, but now the former “diehard” offline users have begun to use the Internet as their usual method for travel shopping and purchasing. PhoCusWright point out that as novice users, this majority of late adopters possesses different travel and purchase behaviours, have varying levels of online skills, requires different messaging and is demographically unique.

Key 2007 E-Tourism Research Findings

From analysing participation in social media, to monitoring online customer satisfaction - researchers worldwide have been generating data to help support tourism businesses online strategy. Here is my end of year pick of recent research findings that have the potential to boost tourism business performance.

Poor user experiencing taking a toll

Online travel sales may still be growing, but according to a recent survey of more than 60,000 Internet users in the United States by Forrester Research, 9 percent fewer people booked travel online in 2007 than in 2005. It is the first time since Forrester began tracking Internet spending a decade ago that a category has lost shoppers.

As the New York Times reported: “This is a wake-up call for the industry,” said Henry Harteveldt, Forrester’s online travel analyst. “Customers are tired of spending two or three hours trying to find the airline or hotel or vacation package that meets their needs.”

The New York Times article also highlighted that PhoCusWright had also found that among US travellers with access to the Internet, the percentage who usually book travel online dropped to 62 percent at the end of last year from 68 percent in 2005, while those who say they usually arrange travel offline increased to 31 percent from 25 percent during the same period.

Read the New York Times article

So the implication for businesses? They must try harder at achieving online customer satisfaction and improving the overall ease of use of travel websites. Its not the end of the world - those customers who do book online are spending more than ever. But opportunities are being lost as a proportion of potential travellers are turning away because they are not receiving the quality of intuitive, satisfying and usable online experience they require.

Customers say it’s getting more difficult to travel shop online

On the same theme, Hotelmarketing.com reported from HEDNA’s December Conference, highlighting online challenges ahead for the travel and tourism industry. They reported Henry Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research describing the industry as moving backwards when it comes to meeting travellers’ expectations. His research shows that “43 per cent believe travel Websites shopping experiences have become less useful, 15 per cent feel the Internet doesn’t help them save money and 11 per cent of US online leisure hotel guests say it’s more difficult to shop for travel online now than when they started.”

He explains that while 47 per cent of travellers are happy to fill out user profile forms, more than half of those travellers say they’re not happy with the benefits received. Travel companies need to do a better job of mining the data that is compiled. Instead of presenting tailored information to guests, “we send guests into information comas, instead of helping them,” Harteveldt says.

Hotelmarketing.com reports that Harteveldt advises the travel industry to“make online booking easier, be clear instead of confusing, reflect customer preferences, do a better job providing content and make it easier for guests to reach us.”

Again the implication for online travel businesses is the same - the experience needs to get easier for customers, more satisfying and more compelling.

And it’s getting tough out there

Just one of the credit crunch anxiety reports came from VisitBritain, as reported by Travelmole:

“VisitBritain is warning the volume of inbound tourism in 2008 will be below the figure achieved last year, blaming the current economic downturn on a reluctance of overseas visitors to travel to the UK.

The first half of next year is expected to be particularly slow, while annual growth in visits will pick up in the second half of the year, according to the organisation’s latest report, which says the value of inbound tourism will remain static in real terms during 2008.”

Though the tourist board sees a host of opportunities amongst the gloom - from the handing over of the Olympic torch and the acceleration of 2012 marketing, through to the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5, they fear the credit crunch ripples out of the US could make 2008 a tough year.

“With still no end in sight to the current turmoil in the global economy the prospects for inbound tourism in 2008 are not looking as good as they should,” says the report.

Do you know how you stack up against the competition? Your customer does

PhoCusWright were as busy as ever and here’s a piece of research businesses can bare in mind, especially as competition stiffens:

The majority of travellers visit between two and five Web sites when shopping for travel online, and the number one reason for doing this is to compare prices. At the same time, nearly 20% of travellers visit six or more sites. People who visit the most sites are likely to be motivated by a desire to read reviews, research destinations, and purchase tickets to events or attractions. (Source, Cathy Schetzine, Technology Analyst for PhoCusWright - The PhoCusWright Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey)

The implication for businesses? Know thy competition! Which other four websites might your potential customers be looking at? How do you stack up in terms of access to quality content and critical information (eg pricing and value factors)?

It’s not all about the US markets

comScore revealed that over 100 million Europeans accessed a travel site in March 2007. Their study of the European online travel industry found that half of the total European online population aged 15 and older visited a travel related site during March 2007 - an increase in traffic of 6 percent versus March 2006.

According to comScore, Expedia Inc. led the European travel category with 18.5 million European unique visitors aged 15 and older during March. The second most-visited European travel site was ViaMichelin, with 13.5 million European unique visitors, followed by the TUI Group’s 12.5 million European unique visitors.

comScore also revealed that Europeans who visited travel sites in March spent an average of almost 37 minutes browsing travel-related content. Within the travel category, online travel agencies garnered the most time spent, 19 minutes on average, followed by airline sites (17 minutes) and hotel sites (15 minutes).

Great content isn’t dead

PhoCusWright found that rich media trumps reviews when it comes to influencing travel bookings. Their recent Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey reveals that when it comes to making travel purchasing decisions, most American travellers would rather see the options for themselves than simply act on the recommendations of others. In fact, travellers want to view the options in detail via pictures, online maps and video.

“For travel shoppers, seeing really is believing. The fact that travelers find these visual tools to be so influential suggests that online rich media, including content-rich, three-dimensional maps, will be an increasingly important part of the travel-planning process,” said Cathy Schetzina, director, research at PhoCusWright. “Traveler review sites that incorporate these visual elements are likely to be more appealing.”

So, don’t throw out great content, simply because you get greater users reviews. Video, images and maps are fantastic for search engine optimisation - now the research demonstrates that they are great for conversion too.

Not that user generated content can be ignored!

comScore and The Kelsey Group found that nearly one out of every four Internet users (24%) reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline. Of those who consulted an online review, 41% of restaurant reviewers subsequently visited a restaurant, while 40% of hotel reviewers subsequently stayed at a hotel.

They found more than three-quarters of review users in nearly every category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase, with hotels ranking the highest (87%). Such is the impact of the reviews that the researchers found consumers were willing to pay at least 20% more for services receiving “excellent” or 5-star rating opposed to those receiving “good” or 4-star ratings.

And it seems that people were satisfied with the overall accuracy of reviews. The study found that 97% of those surveyed who said they made a purchase based on an online review said yes. Full article on Travelmole

This was one of several pieces of research this year that identified the fact that potential customers find user generated reviews implicitly more trustworthy, than marketing messages generated by businesses. The business implication? If you have fans, let them speak on your behalf. Their reviews and testimonials may be more influential that your own copy and messaging.

And, finally…

So, to conclude my round-up of great research findings from 2007. The research I’ve pulled together here implies an interesting mix of opportunities and challenges ahead for travel businesses for whom the online channel has become critical.

First mover advantage has long passed and the early customer convenience benefits of online have become diluted as the space has become even more crowded and fragmented. Yet, there are techniques that individual businesses can incorporate that will work to improve conversion and customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, it seems the travel industry needs to learn from what online customers are telling them - that it is all about quality of user experience and going forward into 2008, this needs to improve.

Subscribe to Tracking Tourism by RSS or Email

Research released by comScore yesterday finds that more than half the European online population now uses social networking sites.

The UK has the highest usage in Europe, with almost 80% of the online populations using social networking sites and the average user racking up more than 800 page views a month.

ComScore’s key findings include:

• The European social networking community stood at 127.3 million unique visitors in August – reaching 56 percent of the European online population
• European users average 3.0 hours per month on Social Networking Sites and made 15.8 visits in the course of the month, viewing 523 pages
• U.K. Social Networking Site Usage is the highest in Europe with 24.9 million unique visitors in August 2007
• 78% of the total U.K. online population now belongs to the country’s social networking community, compared to 62% in Spain, 50% in France, 49% in Italy and 47% in Germany
• U.K. Users Average 5.8 Hours per Month on Social Networking Sites and made 23.3 visits in the course of the month, viewing 839 pages
• Heavy social network site users spend 22 hours per month on their favourite sites, visiting 71 times and viewing over 3,000 pages

The data about these heavy social network site users are a great example of why it is important to beware of averages when looking at any form of research data. Their intense usage effectively lifts the average point, masking the lower engagement of the bulk of lighter users who account for 50% of users.

The comScore research finds that these light users (defined as being the least active 50 percent of the social networking community) spent significantly less time engaged with social networking sites’ content, making just 4.6 visits per person and consuming only 47 pages of social networking content over the course of the month.

Its an example of the 80/20 rule again rearing its head. As Bob Ivins, EVP of International Markets at comScore, explains:

“about eighty percent of all online activity at Social Networking sites can be attributed to only 20 percent of visitors.”

Clearly that has to have significance to tourism businesses advertising to and otherwise engaging with customers within the online social network space.

It will be a significant challenge to ensure that your message gets beyond the 20% of heavy users and into the bulk of the online population who are far less heavily engaged.

Related Tracking Tourism posts

How social media like Flickr and YouTube has become an influence on destination selection

To read Highland Business Research’s free Introduction to Online Social Networks, download the PDF here