Key Hotel E-commerce KPIs to Track

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), or key performance indicators in their literal translation, are metrics that measure the level of performance, indicate how processes are performing and make it possible to quantify objectives. When we talk about KPIs or the main performance indicators for hotel e-commerce, we are referring to metrics that make it possible to assess the performance of a hotel's website (a website that should be sales-focused and have a booking engine in place that can track sales through a web analytics platform such as Google Analytics). As a source for obtaining the KPIs or key performance indicators of a website, we can use Google's free web analytics platform, Google Analytics. Google Analytics provides us with a wealth of information, but we need to know which parameters are relevant and what we should analyse in order to understand how our business is performing. The objective of a hotel's website should be to sell rooms online; therefore, two of the most important indicators will be the bookings and the revenue/turnover generated through the website. The main KPI for eCommerce is the conversion rate, which measures the percentage of users who ultimately make a purchase on our website in relation to the total number of users who have visited us. That is:

• Hotel website conversion rate or ratio, which is equivalent to total website bookings divided by total website visits

Other hotel e-commerce indicators:

• Average booking value: the average total value per booking
• Average price per night: average price per night and per booking

There are many indicators that allow us to better understand the strengths of our website and the areas we need to improve. Although they are not directly related to e-commerce, they are related to the performance of a hotel's website, such as visits, where those visits come from, the browsers users have used or the channel through which they have visited us. Some of these KPIs that will give us a more accurate idea of how our hotel's website is performing and how users behave are: · Traffic sources: Depending on whether users reached our website through a search engine, directly, via a referral from another website or by clicking on an advert. They provide useful information to understand where visits come from · Bounce rate: This tells us how many users entered the website and did not continue browsing. This indicator can help us measure every change we make and whether or not it is well received by users. · Average time: This indicates the average amount of time users spent browsing the website. · Most viewed pages: This tells us which pages have received the most visits. This KPI can provide information about which pages we should retain and which we should improve or change. · Load time: A page's load time is very important for Google indexing, since the shorter the load time, the better the user experience. Fast and efficient page loading will be a determining factor for the website's SEO. These indicators enable us to carry out a highly valuable analysis of our website, draw conclusions and identify the improvements we need to make. When cross-referenced with e-commerce indicators, they give us a complete picture of our hotel's website performance. Knowing yourself is the best way to grow and improve; therefore, knowing how to choose the most important KPIs to analyse is the key to identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Every hotel's main objective is to sell, but we cannot focus solely on whether we sell a lot or a little. We need to look at how we do it and whether we can do it better. If we can tailor our website as closely as possible to each user, the results will follow. In the next post, we will explain the most important KPIs for analysing our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns, whether using Google's Pay Per Click (PPC) programme, Google AdWords, or TripAdvisor's.