Who's In Charge in a Web 2.0 World?

Ask yourself this - "Who's in charge of my business?"

Today, the answer is The CLIENT. Here's a link to a recent conversation that really highlights how much the consumer influences others - and how the web has really changed the way business works.

Gone is the world of B to C (business to consumer) marketing. Web 2.0 is the era of C to C (consumer to consumer), where the business that's the most consumer friendly wins !
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Travelogs Take You There

At our National Conference we discussed using a blog to document your trips and travels as you're cruising. Here's a real world example :

http://www.cruisingwithamyanddebbie.blogspot.com/

CruiseOne's Debbie Rosenthal & Amy Slovis have done a great job of really sharing their travels with the readers of their blog. I'm willing to bet after reading this blog many of you will want to go on a river cruise. Beyond just sharing destination info - it really shares the experiences they had on their journey. If you're not already blogging - do so and share the experience with others via your blog.
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Do you know your Online customer?

I'm just back from the PhocusWright Travel Technology conference. At the conference we had several industry experts evaluate our websites. Although there were a handful of suggestions, their feedback was very positive and led me to the conclusion that we're definitely ahead of many travel sites online in a great many ways. I'm currently scoping out some of the suggested changes, and none look to be very difficult so far.

Here are some interesting findings from the conference :
  • 2 out of every 3 minutes spent on Travel websites are spent by people in the 55+ age group.
  • Offline advertising is the genesis of 2/3 of all searches in the travel category.
  • 39% of those searching for travel actually convert to travel clients - this is much higher than any other category on the Internet (other categories avg is 12%).
  • Searching for travel online is a mainstream activity - 86% of all US internet users will conduct an online search using a travel keyword this year.
  • The global potential of the internet is where the future is - North America is only 25% of the potential audience for travel products.
  • 40% of all clicks to travel websites are from paid search results (Travel is the highest percentage - all other internet industries average 12% from paid results).
  • 88% of Travel Category conversions take 0-60 days - this is the longest purchase cycle of any online industry. (Cruises take the longest, while airline tickets take the least amount of time to convert online)
  • 30% of all internet users delete cookies (within the 60 day period) and evade most online conversion tracking used to measure Return On Investment.

I'll talk more later about findings from this conference, but with these stats we can once again show a strong tendency to really look at the internet as a mainstream way to generate qualified leads from qualified consumers in a quick and efficient manner.

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