Quick summary
The topic that I chose was a slideshow of customers needs in digital marketing. This slideshow was made by travel industrys research authorities. The slideshow contained mainly statistics about booking travelings online and what the customers want and do not want from their travel industrys websites. The slideshow was mainly focused on United States, Germany, United Kingdom and France’s travel statistics. It told in various ways and statistics the worst mistakes a tourism industry website could make in when creating their websites but also gave concrete answers how to avoid them and what to focus on. This is very useful especially when creating travel industry websites who have target groups in countries mentioned above.
The three most important points
In my opinion the first most important point is that planning online can be frustrating from time to time. Not all websites contain decent amount both information and accessibility. As this might sound like a obvious thing, I also learned that the more you put information and videos there, the slower the website will be.
Second most important point is that visualizing your website is important. You have to remember both your target groups and that your websites may have different impact on different groups of people. For example, younger online travelers are more likely to be affected by pictures and other visuals on the website, than relying on reviews. Also people from different countries and continents are affected by different things that they look from their online traveling experience, for example people from United States and Europe in general appreciate reviews, picture and Youtube videos.
The third most important point was that you have to focus on technical issues. People tend to give up and go make a booking somewhere else, if the website does not work properly, or is hard to use. You really have to focus when creating a website and other stuff that it is easy to find, easy to reach, easy to search and easy to customers to contact with you if there is any problems. This kind of comes together with the first point I found important, but iti is so important.
What did I learn from this?
When I was reading the slideshow, I learned many new things. I learned that even though over half of travelers want to plan and book on mobile or online, there is also a huge amount of people, who still want to book their travels offline. The reason for that is that it is easier to ask questions over a phone call for example, than to look from a website or an app. People may have their own personal issues, and they wanna work those issues through with an actual person. I also found very interesting, that people find website easily used as a more important point than having a “good experience” on the website. It was also brought up that to travelers (in general, besides young people) reviews are important to find easily, when booking travels of any kind.
Preference: User Replay, The Perfect Path: What Travelers Want –and Don’t Want –in Their Digital Journey, 2017. Here is the link