BookIt.com

Video Interview

Goals

BookIt.com is a fast-growing, privately held, Florida-based online travel company that competes with travel sites such as Orbitz.com or Travelocity.com .

BookIt.com gave Delve their website analytics “baby” — we own a majority of website optimization tasks related to increasing conversion to bookings above the current benchmark — in the context of website and e-mail channels.

Approach

Over a six-month period, we went through the following steps to arrive at specific A/B test recommendations:

1. Website | Analytics
We started with a Omniture SiteCatalyst audit and fixed a number of serious reporting errors — those fixes allowed us and the client to trust SiteCatalyst data.

We then generated ad hoc reporting and trend analysis of website behavioral data.
Tools:

• Omniture SiteCatalyst (primary tool)
• Google Analytics (secondary tool)

2. Website | Optimization Roadmap

After getting the quantitative web analytics data clean, we began researching the experience of site visitors. We recorded dozens of videos documenting the behavior of actual customers browsing the site and interacting with key features.
Tools:

• UserTesting.com (videos)
• ClickTale.com (videos/heatmaps)
• Kiss Insights (survey tool)
• 4q by iPerceptions (survey tool)
• Usabilla (survey/audience panel tool)

We also surveyed thousands of web visitors, soliciting feedback regarding the ease with which they can navigate the site. The resulting actions taken from this data have been substantial, including:

• Redesign of a key site template that gets up to 20% of all page views
• Work with IT and marketing departments to reprioritize a specific IT project, which, when implemented, will improve booking conversion
• Re-organization of presentation of “product” details throughout the site
• Realization that an important percentage of the pages returned on certain searches went uninspected by visitors

3. E-mail | Redesign from the ground up

We assisted BookIt.com with selecting a new e-mail provider (Responsys) and provided advice on maximizing value from the e-mail program, with the goal of doubling e-mail revenues in the next 12 months.

Using the formula (E-mail revenue = E-mail list * frequency of campaigns * revenue per e-mail sent), we helped the client put together a four-phase plan to achieving revenue growth from the e-mail program:

• Phase 0: Implement the new e-mail provider
• Phase 1: Add simple targeting campaigns to the current email calendar (videos/heatmaps)
• Phase 2: Add complex targeting campaigns
• Phase 3: Add “abandoned browse” and “abandoned cart” campaigns through the Omniture SiteCatalyst integration

4. Customer Data | Mining 

While fixing SiteCatalyst (1), coming up with the Website Optimization Roadmap (2), and helping with the E-mail program (3), we also mined 5 years of transactional data to understand data relationships common to all bookings. For instance:

• Origination: We established the percent likelihood of booking a specific destination, at a specific time of the year, depending on where the customer lived
• Destination: We established the percent likelihood to book a specific destination for the second time, based on what the customer booked during their first time with us
• Retention rates: We established benchmark retention rates and found patterns that indicated many customers bought X months after first purchase

We utilized the above insights to influence the Website Optimization Roadmap (2) and found the insights to be extremely valuable to the E-mail program (3).

Results

We are currently in the midst of finalizing all website optimization recommendations, with the goal of improving conversion to bookings by at least 10%. This and other recommendations are expected to yield tens of millions in incremental revenues in 2012.