Click-through to Inquiry ratio?

[vrooje]

This topic will only affect those owners who have their own property websites and link to them through rental listing sites that allow it.

Would anyone else care to share the number of inquiries they get from their favorite rental listing sites vs. the number of click-throughs to their own site from the listing site?

Last month we had 35 click-throughs from VRBO to our website, and I believe we had 3 inquiries (though two were for less than a week during the high season).

So that's about a 12:1 ratio from VRBO.

Last year I'd say we had about a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio of click-throughs to inquiries from French Connections. This year both our click-throughs and our inquiries went down from FC after their site re-design, but the ratio stayed about the same and maybe even went down a little.

From the French language a-gite site, we had about 25 click-throughs and 4 inquiries. So that's about 6:1.

I can easily accept a 5:1ish ratio, but 12:1 seems rather high -- especially as that's only the people who actually click on the link to our website, not the total number of people who view the ad on any particular site. Perhaps that's because of the dollar-to-euro exchange rate?

Or, perhaps there's just something wrong with my VRBO ad! (It's at http://www.vrbo.com/55165 if anyone wants to take a look.)

Thoughts? Opinions? Is this even a useful statistic?

Cheers,
-Brooke

[tansy]

Brooke - I haven't got my stats to hand of clicks but ...but I've taken I think it is 45 weeks between the 2 properties, 11 weeks repeat business, 1 vrbo, the rest of the 33 weeks h-r.com - out of those enquiries I only have dropped 5 - 3 because we were booked those weeks - 2 didn't amount to anything.

So for me VRBO's stats stink!!

[paolo]

Brooke,

I have been re-reading this and scratching my head, and I am not sure I understand!

Is there any value in comparing these two figures? I am not seeing it. Presumably you mean the total number of enquiries from that ad, rather than the number of people who click through to your website and then enquire (which I don't think you can measure)?

I’m not seeing any connection between the two numbers, but it would not be the first time I am guilty of being a little dim.

[vrooje]

Paolo,

What I mean is a comparison of these two stats:

1) on my webstats provided by my hosting service, I see a list of all URLs that referred people to my page. It's a measure of how many people click through a link on a site (I get about 20-40 click-throughs a month from my signature and "www" link on Lay My Hat, for example).

2) The number of inquiries from a particular source.

I actually don't get a lot of raw inquiries from my web page, and if I do many of them tell me that they first found me through French Connections or VRBO or Holiday-Rentals.com. So actually I can track that pretty well, but that's not exactly what I'm thinking about.

My thinking is that if I know that 40 people in a particular month clicked on a link from my VRBO ad and viewed my website, and only two of them inquired (either from the VRBO form or from my webform while stating they found us through VRBO), then my ratio of click-throughs to inquiries is 20:1. That seems rather high!

Does that make more sense? Sorry if I haven't explained it well -- I'm not even sure that I have after all that due to several glasses of wine with dinner.

In any case, I think your questioning of whether this is a useful statistic is very valid.

[alexia s.]

The bottom-line has to be the number (or value) of actual bookings generated by each web site - but I also look at the "quality" of these bookings. Since one can count on renting during the UK summer holiday season(for ex), a web site that only brings in bookings for this period is hardly worth paying for, as there are other commercial sites that will generate bookings out of high season as well. This is why I don't think that just one booking from web site "X' for a high season period only would justify "X"s fee : this period would have been booked anyway by a better performing site (whose fee has also been paid for).
One of the web sites we pay for has excellent results for one of our properties but has never generated a booking for the other; the reverse is true for another site! This confirms what Paolo has always said: it is difficult to recommend one site over another, since they all work differently for different properties.

[Alan Knighting]

I entirely agree with Alexia on this one.

Year on year the results from individual web sites seem to change so radically that I find it impossible to make a judgement on which is a good web site and which is not so good.

Also, I think it is far too simplistic to say that one weeks' booking at £500 pays for a Website entry that costs £500, particularly in High Season when the week would probably be booked anyway. Out of season the booking and the money are nice to have but I think the comparison should be made between the profit generated and the cost of generating that profit.

Alan

[paolo]

Hi Brooke,

Me comprende now. I didn't think you would know where your enquiries via your website first found you (vrbo/fc/search engine, etc.), but you do, so that makes the ratio valid. Whether it is a useful stat...I still don't know.

Obviously much more important is the bottom line - how many enquiries did each of your listing sites generate over a year. Others use bookings as the measure, but I don't think bookings are the listing site's job, but ours. The listing site has to provide enquiries, what we do with them after that is down to us.

Do you know if your webstats include spiders, etc. in the number of people following the link to your site from vrbo? If so, that would give a very distorted impression of how many people are clicking through to your site - vrbo must be crawled all the time by every search engine spider out there.

[alexia s.]

"Others use bookings as the measure, but I don't think bookings are the listing site's job, but ours."
Enquiries that don 't lead to bookings are useless - whoever's fault it is. I don't look for a site that generates a lot of enquiries: I need one that generates a particular class of enquiry. Each site attracts a different "public" & each "public" will tend to book a particular kind(or "class", as in "classification") of property.
Paolo, if you use enquiries (& not bookings) as the measure, what would you do with the site that generated 1,000 enquiries & no bookings, and the site that generated 10 enquiries and 10 bookings? I exaggerate to underline what I see as the flaw in your approach - I could be wrong, but I'd like to know!

[paolo]

Each site attracts a different "public"

That's an idea people have about listing sites but I don't think it is correct.

Most people arrive at a listing site having typed a search term into a search engine which returns that listing site high up the rankings. Unless certain search terms are used by certain types of people, returning certain types of listing site, I don't see how you can differentiate between listing sites on this basis.

And that certain type of person would presumably be someone who is more prone to enquiring about lots of different properties; or inappropriate properties; or just enjoys wasting people's time. The net result being, you would get a lower proprtion of bookings to enquiries.

I don't think listing sites are like newspapers - segmented by class or political affiliation, and appealing to different sections of society. Perhaps they will be eventually - that's what brands do - but I don't think the industry is mature enough yet for people to gravitate towards particular sites. Wouldn't holiday-rentals appeal equally to all sorts of people because its presentation and usability are the best?

One factor which could increase dud enquiries is a site's geographical precision - if all properties in the South of France are lumped together, you will get enquiries from people expecting a house in St Tropez to be on the Atlantic coast, etc. You would presumably get fewer of these the further the site allows you to drill down geographically.

These are my views, and they may be 100% wrong! Have you noticed particular sites give you good/bad enquiries? If so, which ones?

[alexia s.]

Paolo,
My approach is far more naive than you think (I don't even have anything as advanced as an "idea" about sites): at the end of the year I look at the revenue generated by each site, compare that to the outlay (cost) & decide to continue or not on that basis only. I do take into consideration the season(if one site generates low income but income in a low season it could be worth keeping).
The number of enquiries doesn't come into it - the fewer per rental the better!
And hey - what about my question: "what would you do with the site that generated 1,000 enquiries & no bookings, and the site that generated 10 enquiries and 10 bookings?"

[alexia s.]

Paolo,
Forgot YOUR question:" Have you noticed particular sites give you good/bad enquiries? If so, which ones?"
Apart from scams, bad enquiries are, I guess, those that don't lead anywhere. In this category I would have to include A1vacations & Cyberrentals - which do brilliantly for properties in the States.

[vrooje]

Paolo,

Good point about the search engine spiders! I haven't thus far differentiated between browsers coming from a particular place. I'm sure that's possible, though.

Wouldn't other sites, like French Connections, be crawled at least nearly as much as VRBO? I don't get a lot of click-throughs from French Connections anymore (I used to last year -- this is one of the reasons I'm sure their site redesign has made their effectiveness worse for properties in my area). Now I'm wondering if all of those were bots!

In terms of inquiry to booking ratio, I believe all our listings are about the same. There are only a couple of listing sites which bring in any significant inquiries/bookings at all, but the ratio doesn't vary much between those.

[paolo]

And hey - what about my question: "what would you do with the site that generated 1,000 enquiries & no bookings, and the site that generated 10 enquiries and 10 bookings?"

I haven't assessed the performances of my ads in these terms, but I haven't noticed anything like this happening. I just seem to get the same sort of enquiry-to-booking ratio across the board.

But I'm probably not a good example because I have a couple of village houses which are 'unique' - there is nothing else like them for rent in the village, and the village is in the 'sought-after' bracket. So people who do enquire are less likely to be shopping around than if I had, say, a villa in Orlando.

It's interesting that your two non-performers are American sites and presumably those enquiries come from the US and Canada. Perhaps unfamiliarity with your location is a factor here?

[paolo]

Wouldn't other sites, like French Connections, be crawled at least nearly as much as VRBO?

I don't know about this at all so I won't venture an opinion. VRBO is a much bigger site (36,000+ ads), with more inbound links, if that counts for anything.

[Alan Knighting]

Paolo,

I think I am on all fours with Alexia on this one.

I have what I think is a practical approach. I judge the performance of a rental website, or a personal website, on how many enquiries I get from it and I judge my performance on how many of those enquiries I convert into bookings.

Being number one on the listings and a getting a million hits are of no interest to me if they result in no enquiries and no bookings. They may be good for the personal ego but they are useless for the bank balance.

Alan