Web controlling – the way to successful e-commerce

Why is web controlling so important for hotels and their marketing? Well, for most hoteliers, it is important to promote direct website bookings. That’s no surprise if you consider that commission fees of third party OTAs are consuming a significant amount of their revenue. According to certain studies, these payments crossed the billion dollar mark a long time ago and are constantly increasing. When asked how many visitors come across their website, however, hoteliers often don’t know the answer.

Yet being informed about those numbers is key to success. Without effective web controlling, it is virtually impossible to measure achievements or failings. And in reality, it is now possible to measure anything, on the internet. It’s just a question of knowing what needs to be measured and how to use those results. For effective web controlling, hoteliers need to determine what their objectives are, how they can reach them, and how they should adapt their daily business plans to make that happen.

To determine and set those objectives, you should be looking at certain key figures that can help you measure and understand your economic success. Primarily, we are talking about Return on Investment (RoI), Unique Website Visitors, Conversion Rates and Bounce Rates – Looking at these figures will help you with your web controlling by measuring your economic performance, as well as determine how you can improve your website.

So as a rough rule of thumb for web controlling, keep the following in mind:

A high Conversion Rate, a low Bounce Rate, and a high number of clicks per visitor indicate a good usability.

Of course, working with key figures will never bring you an absolute truth, but rather general web controlling tendencies. There will undoubtedly be some mistakes, and it is impossible to collect all data (e.g. cookies might be disabled, user switching devices, Google Analytics doesn’t show all data anymore). It is also important to keep in mind that single figures alone are not very relevant; you need to have a proper sample size of data pointing in the same direction in order to be able to draw any conclusions for your web controlling.

That being the case, however, effective and well-conducted web controlling will enable you to measure your economic activities, so that you can properly size up your performance. More than that, you can also use that information to determine what you need to do to improve, particularly when it comes to your website and the source of your visitors.

The truth is that, without efficient web controlling, you can’t know what you’re doing well. You can only guess.

Learn more about the advantages of using Customer Alliance for review management and web controlling: