Like many other businesses, hotels have utilized key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge their success in accomplishing their primary business objectives long before vacation rentals did. KPIs are crucial because they help businesses make better decisions, increase profitability, and, most importantly, gauge their overall success.
We already know that owners of holiday homes can learn a lot from hoteliers, and KPI tracking is no exception. Analyzing the performance indicators of your website with a service like Google Analytics can provide you access to a wealth of data that can help you change how you operate. Choosing which KPIs to concentrate on specifically is a little trickier.
We’ve put together this list of Google Analytics KPIs you should keep an eye on for your vacation rental website to give you a head start.
Traffic generating
Understanding your traffic source will help you see the wider picture when considering marketing and advertising. The various ways and channels that users access your website are visible with Google Analytics.
1: Source/Medium Sessions
A visitor’s source is the place from where they arrived when they accessed a website. This might be the name of a search engine like Google, the name of a website that directed them to your site, like Facebook, or the direct traffic, or those who put in your domain name directly or accessed it through their bookmarks.
Every person who visits a website has a source, and the same is true of their media. “Organic” (unpaid search), “CPC” (or cost per click, from paid search campaigns), “referral”, “email,” or “none” are some of the options.
You may assess the success of your marketing activities by counting the number of visitors that come from each source and distribution channel.
Go to “Acquisition” in the sidebar menu, then “All Traffic,” then “Source/Medium,” to view your unique traffic source and medium data.
2. Channel grouping sessions
Analyzing your channel groupings is a simple approach to evaluating the many sources of your incoming traffic. You may find these rule-based classifications of your various traffic sources by selecting “Acquisition,” “All Traffic,” and then “Channels.” It displays the number of visits to your website in a single glance by grouping the most popular sources (Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social, Paid Search, Email, and Other).
Audience
Examining your audience—the people who go to your vacation rental website—can tell you a lot about the kinds of visitors you draw. Additionally, you may learn how long visitors stay on your pages, whether they come back, and what demographics they belong to.
3. Sessions and users
All of the individual sessions that each user of your website starts are collectively referred to as “sessions.” A fresh session will be started after 30 minutes if they are not active on your website. Any visitors who leave your website and return within 30 minutes are considered to be part of the same session.
By visiting your Google Analytics dashboard and selecting “Audience” then “Overview,” you can learn how many visitors and sessions your website has received. In the upper right corner, you can edit the report’s dates. You can also use the drop-down option to access a comparison graph of your sessions versus users.
4. The number of new and recurring visitors
You can determine your site’s success in luring users back by counting the number of new and returning visitors.
These statistics can be found by selecting “Behavior” from the “Audience” menu, then “New vs. Returning.” In the Audience Overview, you can also see a pie chart of this information.
5. Genres and age ranges
Knowing who is visiting your website specifically will enable you to tailor your adverts and content (among other things) to attract additional users who fit the same age and gender demographics.
By selecting “Audience,” “Demographics,” and then “Overview,” you can learn the age and gender of your visitors.
6. Mobile (Devices)
You must have a mobile-friendly website because more and more vacationers are making hotel reservations on their mobile devices. When you click “Audience,” “Mobile,” and then “Devices,” you can see exactly which devices are being used by visitors to your website.
Tracking of pages
You can assess your website’s overall performance by looking at its pages’ many metrics that relate to how users engage with it. Page tracking metrics can better understand why your website is (or isn’t) operating correctly by measuring how long visitors stay on your site and how many pages they visit.
7. Ordinary pages per session
This measure examines the typical number of pages that each visitor views throughout a session. It is related to the amount of time people spend on your website and can give you insight into whether or not your content is engaging visitors or whether you need to revise it to get better results.
Access this data by selecting “Overview” from the “Audience” report.
8. Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors who only view one page of your website is known as the bounce rate. In other words, it’s the proportion of visitors to your website that depart without having a second look.
Monitoring your bounce rate can help you improve your website’s performance and its future content. The “Behavior” menu item on the left-hand side of the screen, followed by “Overview,” will show you your website’s bounce rate as a percentage.
9. Typical session length
Google Analytics divides the total number of sessions by the total number of sessions to determine the average session length. This data is located in the “Audience” and “Overview” sections.
Conversion to goal
Data on your website’s conversion rate, maybe one of the most sophisticated KPIs to track, enables you to determine whether you are getting the bookings you desire most from your website.
10. Rates of conversion
You may track four different sorts of goals using Google Analytics. These include Destination (the user accesses a particular web page), Duration (the user stays on your site for a certain amount of time), Pages/Screens per session (the user views a certain number of pages/screens), and Event (the user conducts a specified action).
You may set up your goals in Google Analytics to track revenue, acquisition, inquiries, or engagement.
Pre-order requests or completed orders could both be measured in revenue. You may check the number of new users who converted to leads, prospects, signups, and end customers in Acquisition. You can assess inquiries by phone, chat, email, reviews, and other channels by setting goals in inquiry. Utilizing Engagement, you may gauge user interest in various media (video, slideshow), shared content, alert subscriptions, etc.
