A platform for success

STA Travel has a web presence in over 20 countries that, previous to teaming up with WebTrends, was controlled independently within each region and serviced by a small IT team.  There was no global system, architecture, or a platform for the web and so there was no way for STA Travel to efficiently track user engagement with the website and how to convert ‘lookers to bookers.’ STA Travel therefore aimed to launch a content management platform and felt that it made sense both from a technical and business perspective to use WebTrends to support it’s deployment.

Initially the main objective of the site was to bring STA Travel’s core information, travel expertise and booking applications online. A lot of the travel it provides can be booked on the internet but it’s the content, travel help tools, and customer support that really set STA Travel apart, and it wanted to be able to streamline all of this online; where STA Travel customers will form their first impressions of the business.

With these objectives in mind, STA Travel opted to use WebTrends to understand the journey a customer takes – from the search engine through to the booking application.  To state an example; a user comes to the site, and conducts a search from the home page. From here the WebTrends solution allows STA Travel to follow a streamlined flow (‘conversion funnel’) through to the booking engine.  This meant pages where people dropped out of the ‘conversion funnel’ were highlighted, which helped to pinpoint problem areas of the site that required optimisation.

Marketing in the Dark

Previously it was impossible for STA Travel to successfully build a picture of it’s customer demographics and physical location because it didn’t have a view of which devices people were using and which countries they were coming to the site from. So following the launch of the iPhone in the US, STA Travel observed a large spike in customers using the device to search the site, certainly more so than for any other mobile application.  WebTrends gave STA Travel the ability to understand and monitor what the current trends in internet usage were, helping them to develop a strategy and process for making tactical changes online.  So in this case, the site was developed in order to be more iPhone friendly.

Engagement Analytics

STA Travel is now looking to go beyond tracking what people are doing on the site and drill down to what they are actually engaging with; how they are interacting with the applications, and what areas are most popular. This process is termed ‘engagement analytics’ – or the measurement of genuine engagement with a site, as opposed to the simple process of counting page views.

STA Travel’s Mapmyadventure application, developed as a homage to the map budding travellers have on their bedroom wall, with pins highlighting where they had been and where they want to go, was a perfect test-bed for the use of engagement analytics. So having brought in Google Maps to develop an application where users could digitally create a map of all the places they wanted to visit, STA Travel worked with WebTrends to develop a tracking function to find out where people are literally clicking on the map itself. This allowed STA Travel to make contextual special offers for the regions receiving the most clicks, and easily identify the most popular destinations at certain points in the year, in order to develop campaigns to promote these locations at the optimal time.

Ultimately the relationship with Web Trends has fundamentally changed the way that STA Travel develops it’s website. Rather than looking at how to develop something, developing it and then ruling it out, priority is now given to what the business requirements are, and the KPIs for a particular area of the site.  So the measurement is thought about at a much earlier stage in the process. 

Working with WebTrends has helped STA Travel understand that although certain users may not actually buy anything, they’re still valuable to the business. Currently most people use analytics to measure the people that come to a website and make a purchase – what they’re forgetting is all these other valuable users who may not buy directly but are advocating or engaging with a brand in some form.

Conrad Bennett is Senior Technical Services Director at marketing performance management and web analytics specialist WebTrends