After switching to a new website host mid-year, the Williamsburg Area Destination Marketing Committee benefited from higher mobile traffic and increased ticket purchases in 2013.
WADMC Director Corrina Ferguson presented data at WADMC’s Monday meeting, showing VisitWilliamsburg.com page visits between June 1 and Dec. 31 from tablet users increased nearly 71 percent from the same period in 2012. Visits by cell phone users increased nearly 84 percent. Total web purchases – of hotel rooms, tickets, car rentals and plane tickets – increased 15 percent in 2013 compared with 2012, with total revenue rising 18 percent.
WADMC, tasked with using the local $2 hotel tax to drive overnight visits, and the Greater Williamsburg Chamber and Tourism Alliance merged two sites in mid-May last year: VisitWilliamsburg.com and ExploreWilliamsburg.com. Now VisitWilliamsburg.com, which is device-responsive so the page view automatically adjusts by device, serves mainly tourists while the Alliance maintains a separate website for businesses.
In addition to increased page visits from cell phone and tablet viewers, the VisitWilliamsburg.com site also had a decreased percentage of new visits, which means many people repeatedly visited the site.
The tablet viewer bounce rate – percentage of visitors who looked at the homepage and then navigated off the site – decreased by 13 percent. The bounce rate for those who viewed the site on their phones was 28 percent. The average time tablet and phone viewers spent on the site also increased by nearly 25 percent and nearly 29 percent, respectively.
In looking at total page views from all visitors – not just those using tablets or cell phones – site visits increased by more than 8 percent to a total of more than 1.6 million. The number of new visitors increased by nearly 7 percent, the bounce rate decreased by more than 6 percent, and the average visit length increased nearly 9 percent.
VisitWilliamsburg.com lists information about area attractions, lodging facilities, restaurants, shopping and golf, and it also gives visitors the opportunity to book rooms or purchase tickets. In 2013, the total number of transactions on the site increased 15 percent from 2012 to a total of 11,993 transactions.
Visitors using the site booked 13,848 room nights, more than $3,000 in car rentals, more than $7,000 in flights and nearly $1.2 million in tickets to area attractions. Total revenue through the booking site increased to more than $2.9 million last year compared with more than $2.4 million in 2012.
Not even a month in 2014, Ferguson was already looking at page visits for this year.
“We’re only looking at three weeks into the year so we can’t make a very big statistical evaluation of the entire 2014 season,” Ferguson said.
Available data showed site visits between Jan. 1 and Jan. 19 as being 8 percent lower than the same time last year, but the bounce rate decreased more than 8 percent and the average visit length increased nearly 19 percent.
While the number of visits was down, more viewers booked vacations through VisitWilliamsburg.com in the first three weeks of the year than last year.
Total orders were up 42 percent over last year – to a total of 135 – with revenue up 25 percent. In total, 204 room nights were booked and $5,022 in tickets purchased, which is an increase of 21 percent and 129 percent, respectively.
As WADMC tries to increase overnight visits year-round, it also attempts to drive overnight visits during specific times of year. One of the specific focuses is on the Christmas season, which has a special web page for holiday events. Ferguson classified results from the page as “excellent” in a presentation Monday.
WADMC used Google AdWords to drive viewers to VisitWilliamsburg.com/Christmas around the holidays and received higher than average click-through rates – a measure of how ads are working online – for three campaigns: “Williamsburg Package Deal,” “Santa in Williamsburg” and “Williamsburg Holidays.”
Monitoring the click-through rate for various campaigns will enable Ferguson to fine-tune advertising each year to be more attractive to tourists. In total, Christmas page views increased more than 37 percent in 2013.
Ferguson is also working to dial down the number of key words that bring up the VisitWilliamsburg.com site based on search results and which words bring the most people to the site. The top 20 keywords brought 56 percent of site viewers, with keywords like “things to do in Williamsburg” and “Save Big with Bundles” bringing in more visitors than other keywords like “Williamsburg in Spring.” Reducing the number of keywords and fine-tuning them based on page views would decrease the chances for people to end up on the site by mistake.
In addition to looking at webpage views, WADMC looked at a timeline for hiring a new advertising firm to create commercials. After hearing what does and does not bring visitors to the area from a survey last year, WADMC opted to look for a new firm to refocus its ad message. Based on the timeline, a new advertising firm should be selected by mid-March.
