Wouter Blog

So you want to know what it's like with 4?

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 21:54:00 +0200

Usually you will find stuff about travel and online on my blog, with some exceptions. Not that the other stuff in my live isn’t blogfähig, I just chose to keep it professional. As many friend, family and colleagues ask me what live is like with 4 kids, I thought let’s write about an average day. So let me know if this post amuses you might see more of it. :)

Once every two weeks my better half Anneloes leaves for her work and returns 3-5 days later. As you might have guessed, her employer is KLM and she’s a flight attendant. Her routes are intercontinental as she works in business class only (KLM doesn’t have business class in EU anymore). In the before-children era (BC) the arrival of her schedule meant a choice for me to join her either on a weekend partying in Hong Kong, 3 days wine tasting in Cape Town or a week of diving on Bonaire. After the Daltons (AD) it meant: is it in the weekend yes/no? In case of no: is it on our regular kindergarten days, is a babysitter or grandpa/ma available? In case all above are no, I take the day off.

This weekend was one of those single daddy weekends, which I absolutely love! Because you’re left to your own devices to do the job of caretaker, I am there for them 100%. Normally you find some unguarded moment to tweet, post or mail because the partner will probably keep an eye out, this weekend I’m at their full disposal. The key for me is to do a lot of stuff with them. Staying at home usually implies me having to play judge Dredd all day. So we cycle a lot, we have one of those all Dutch ‘bakfietsen’ which fits all four. Touring the vicinity visiting windmills and eating pancakes or wentelteefjes in child friendly places easily takes until naptime. Another one of our favorites is Artis the Zoo in Amsterdam, we’re a member and can go as often as we like.

Today was an Artis day, so I got up with my daily alarm clock: Bram (5yo who likes to wake daddy by plucking his eyebrows, somewhere between 6:00-6:30AM). As he selects his app of choice (Youtube, Angrybirds, Flightcontrol or one of the toddler TV apps) I fix him breakfast, as well as lunch to go for all 4. Thijmen (3yo) shouts, I run upstairs to fetch him in order for the girls not to be woken up. He joins Bram behind the iPad (reluctantly accepting that Bram’s choice is what will be watched) and I make him a bottle of porridge and a sandwich. A moment of peace in which I Flipboard my way through breakfast. I hear the girls are waking up and make their bottles, toss one at Floor (2yo) and feed Lotte (1yo) the other. I get them dressed and the boys downstairs as well (+1 for Bram who can do this himself, if you remind him every minute that is). I put the girls in their high chairs behind the other iPad (not a common thing but sometimes it’s so nice not to have an audience for your morning ritual) as my mom swings by to take Bram to swimming class. Just when I shampooed my hair, Thijmen enters the bathroom to tell me he switched off both iPads and is ready for ‘a #2’. (+1 for Thijmen to be potty trained, -1 for not being able to pull his pants down and mount the porcelain throne) I cut the shower short and help the little fellow out, before shit hits the fan (or boxer short in this case). While he’s sitting comfortably, I rush down to press play again on the iPad to keep the ladies quiet. Finally we’re all dressed and almost good to go. I unleash the girls from the chairs to play until I’m done packing all the diapers, hankies, drinks, sandwiches, Artis passes, etc. Suddenly I lear BOOM. Lotte lies flat under the table and is silent. This frightens me because a normal boom is followed by a 1 min cry. While I pick her up she gasps for air, I check all vital signs, the limbs on movement, eyes on focus. Meanwhile I scan the perimeter for clues what happened. Thijmen is so caught up in his iPad that he couldn’t have been involved or seen a thing. He wouldn’t even have noticed if Santa dropped by for presents. I see a pieced of chewed up apple on the ground and one piece on the table, so probably Lotte mounted the table via her high chair, snatched the apple, tried to descend again, slipped and went flat out spitting the apple out. Her age is a risky one, she does not see any danger, yet has the power to climb all furniture. As I lie Lotte down on the couch, she quickly recuperates so I no emergency room thankfully. Must have been a hell of a fall because this is the first time she stays put on the couch for 5 minutes.

Whilst I’m done packing the bus (Chrysler Voyager), Bram returns from swim class and we’re off. 10AM at Artis, I’m pretty proud beating the crowd. Two ladies in the stroller, two gents with the rickshaw-alike cart. This is my quiet time, the animals and raskals keep each other pretty busy. As I come here bi-weekly, the most interesting animals to me are the uncontained mammals. I love spying on other parents to confirm I’m not doing that bad of a job, considering I’m outnumbered severely. They spy back at me and challenge their spouse why they’re so busy with 2 kids while that guy can be so relaxed with 4 kids. My kids guide me passed their favorite animals; the Madagascar dancing squad, the smelly penguins, the agile sea lions, the butterflies. We have lunch, they squander off to the playground, I keep counting to 4 in order to keep track of them. My fearless Freggle Floor climbs the highest slides and pulls along her sibling Bram who would have never done it without her example. Thijmen prefers to welcome all the kids at the end of the slide. Lotte keeps dad company with a cold beverage and a snack. We leave in time for Lotte’s nap (which starts in the car and ends in her bed) and head home.

In the car Bram keeps me busy with all kinds of questions (what’s closer home or the zoo? I see 10 windmills, and you? This is where we ran out of gas 4 years ago, right?), continuously. Suddenly the car starts vibrating, a flat tire. On the rim I steer my way to a gas station that is conveniently up ahead and call my parents to keep the kids busy while I change the tire. We continue our way home safely. I love my parents and I love living around the corner from their house. It makes life so much easier that they take the boys while Lotte sleeps. As Floor plays in the treehouse I make use of the quiet moment and start writing this post. The joy was short lived, as my grandmother and her partner (together 183 years) unexpectedly dropped by to say hi and see their great grand children. Between the talks with them I cook dinner, get Lotte out of bed and keep an eye on both girls. My grandma usually can take an hour of the activity in my house and leaves when the boys return for dinner. A meal with the kids will not be consumed with a lot of taste. Most important thing is that you have a full stomach again to run the last few miles until bed time. Meanwhilst I’m feeding Lotte, making sure Floor doesn’t put her dish in her hair, Thijmen actually swallows something and Bram stays put. No matter how well prepared you are for dinner, kids will find for something to ask that’s not on the table.

The final sprint: divide and conquer. The key to survive the last and most challenging part of the day (as all are exhausted and contrary to one might think, hyperactive) is to put two behind the telly and take the other two upstairs for the evening ritual (bathing, pj’s, bottle, tooth brushing, story). Only when Lotte is in bed I invite the boys up, this way I avoid havoc and enable myself to run that last mile with a smile. I read a bedtime story with as many weird voices as I can think of and carry them to bed on my back. (no hernia yet, lucky to be a relatively young dad)

My body yearns for bed, I have to fight the urge to hit the sack with them at 8pm. The moment I realize they’re all asleep is one of pure bliss and victory for having exerted them enough. Strangely the freedom that follows lifts the energy level again to stay up until midnight which I regret the following morning at 6am when Bram plucks my brow again.

PS: after posting this to Twitter, Ilonka tweeted me this post. A must read for any parent of small children. You are not alone. :)

"Sergey is Bruce Wayne, and I’m Lucius Fox."

Sat, 25 May 2013 06:51:58 +0200

“Sergey is Bruce Wayne, and I’m Lucius Fox.”

- Astro Teller, speaking to Brad Stone for his in-depth look into Google [x]. (via parislemon)
Inside the department of moonshots…Bloomberg interviews Astro Teller (named Eric, until college; his spikey haircut resembled artificial grass)

digg: Do a Google Image search for Atari Breakout. You wont be...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:17:45 +0200

digg:

Do a Google Image search for Atari Breakout. You wont be disappointed.

Brings back memories…

Hitchhiker's guide to online travel planning

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:50:00 +0200

Some say booking a trip online feels like homework. By navigating these sites and apps in the 5 stages of travel, it feels to me like the fun already started.

Dreaming

Good old Pinterest, Gogobot and even Quora can start a daydream and make my bucket list grow. Twice Twitter has inspired me so much it made me actually book. I tweeted: “Where to go for a long weekend away with the kids, not too far?" @Ronnieovergoor shared his experiences with the Dutch isle Vlieland and a few weeks later I had a fantastic time (despite the weather) in this place. Later that year I wanted to go diving with a friend, I turned to Twitter again via the question “Who has good experiences with liveaboard dive cruises?" and Neil Gosh of Original Diving replied with great options. We booked a great week of wreck diving through him and had an awesome experience. This year, after some extensive Googling (glamping, small children on specific regions), I booked this place and shared it on twitter. Both a colleague and a Tweep booked it after seeing the tweet.

Planning

The previous twitter examples could not be answered by any website, I would have had to sift through numerous reviews, blogs and providers to come to a decision. This is why the quest for the perfect holiday feels so much like homework, it only becomes easy if you know where you want to go and preferably when. For this I use sites like HotelFinder, Hipmunk, TripAdvisor, Kayak, or online travel agents (OTA) like Booking and Easytobook. (filter by travel type, budget and reviews to create a short list). A site that is actually working on semantic search ("family vacation 2 hour flight from Amsterdam beach") is Hopper (still in closed beta). I can’t wait to see it live! When you’re going to be visiting multiple destinations, a personalized Google map can be very handy.

Booking

Despite (or perhaps because of) my OTA background, I always check the site of the accommodation itself for early booking discounts or packages. When looking for a flight through an airliner’s site, always be careful the price isn’t raised based on your cookie. Just use anonymous browsing or delete cookies to be sure.

Experiencing

Both attractions and undiscovered gems I find on Gogobot, Dusk, Gidsy (recently acquired by Getyourguide). Also travelblogs, like the one of my former colleagues, who come from all over the world, are a great sourcing ground. For restaurants I mostly use Foursquare (exploratory mode according to your friends is great!) or TripAdvisor. During the trip I use Concur and Tripit for my flight / hotel itinerary / expensing and Foursquare lists of to do’s. On Spotify offline I play my favorite music, I download movies on the ipad to keep the 4 kids quiet in the air. The KLM houses app allows me to check my Delft blue house collection before picking a new one. (Not that I dare to fly business class with my brady bunch…) The Star Walk app is great for those polution free places where you can actually see the milkyway. Booking a taxi to Schiphol airport I use Tinker, best price and nice personal touch.

Sharing

With Instagram / Snapseed I make my shots just a little nicer and share them on Twitter (public), Facebook (former colleagues, family, friends) and Google+ (limited circles or directly emailed to my relatives that are social media averse). I share my Google Latitude (which is unfortunately soon to be deprecated) location. Foursquare is linked to Gogobot which makes it very easy to update. I create city passports in Gogobot that are ideal to give tips about places I’ve been. Also it’s like a travel memory (What was the name of that nice restaurant again?)

Did I miss any great apps/sites for travel planning?

This article has been posted in Dutch on Travelnext.

AirBnB believes in market place to solve acco quality issues. #travelnext

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:04:00 +0100

Airbnb’s @Oleruch is managing director Nordics and Netherlands and spoke at the Travelnext conference today.

The massively growing peer to peer accommodation site that boasts 210.000+ accommodations in 30.000 cities is becoming more and more popular outside the US. I actually have a colleague that stays at a friend’s place over the weekend to make money renting his place on AirBnB.

Success factors

According to Ole, the shift in consumerism & So-Lo-Mo (for n00bs: Social Local Mobile) are the catalists of the growth.

The shift incorperates:

Value: from credit to reputation. The currency is more and more reputation.
Trust: from advertising to community (where guest and hosts review each other)
Platform: individual ownership to shared access
Hyper consumption to collaborative consumption

As an online company, one might wonder why they are opening offices around the globe. It’s actually to keep on learning from the users in the different locales. In the Netherlands, year to date, AirBnB booked 250.000 nights in the Netherlands. In London there are 1200 arrivals on a daily basis. The coverage of Amsterdam does not stay far behind that of San Francisco, which amazes me how fast the amount of hosts have grown.

AirBnB has been troubled in the past by security, therefore they’ve focused relentlessly on:

EUR 700.000 host guarantee for when the apparment might be sacked.
Secure payment AirBnB keeps payment 24 hours into stay to allow disputes to be solved between host and guest.
Verified photographers, free for the host! (so if you want to sell your house…)
24/7 customer care.

The profiles of both hosts and guest (through social FB, Twitter and Linkedin) enable people to look eachother in the eyes and using the new social currency to determine value. Peer2Peer reviews tend not to be negative. Then guests turn to AirBnB which sends the account manager to the host to improve their service.

Mobile share vs last minute booking

I asked Ole why, with 26% mobile traffic, it takes so long to get a reply from a host. No phone numbers, just direct message. And the response rate per host does not incorperate time to response, which is for me the key to solve the mobile last minute issue. Ole replied that it’s up to the host. AirBnB is working on better solutions like enabling hosts updating availability through the mobile app, and communicating less through email. Prompt hosts to update. Also, you can use the Match product on the site, offering your accommodation needs to the hosts. The response time can be a requirement.

Benefits for local market

An independent research has found that while the guests of AirBnB spend less on their accommodation, they spend more in the local economy. I wonder if they took the the salary of the hotel employees into account, which is spent again in the local economy. Ole will check this. Also, I wonder when AirBnB will tap into the activity market.

The search result page algo

Question from the room: what’s the search result algorithm, what makes me rank #1? Ole did not really comment, saying it’s determined by the filtering. (and prompting to ask James van Thiel from Google ;). The question is of course not about the filters, but the weight of all the variables. I checked it and it’s probably a mix of reviews, social relation to the host (friends of you that know them or have stayed there), response rate, CTR and conversion rate.

I also asked Ole where these guests booked before. He noted that AirBnB is actually not only eating marketshare from hotels, but is growing the total travel market. Impressive.

Local experience
There are pilots with printed todo-lists in SF and NYC. AirBnB wants the hosts to be the ones that advise the guests, therefore AirBnB has sourced this content with the hosts, and lets them hand this out. They do not step into the ‘revenue trap’ of one size fits all ancillary revenue partnerships.

Culture

All get flown into the mothership in SF to understand the DNA. This is necessary with 500 people, up from 50 a year ago. For country manager they’ve interviewed 2000 candidates for 10 positions. Then they put all 10 country managers in the Berlin office together and flew in the other employees 1 by 1. After this they flew the 10 country managers into SF in order to instil the culture in them.

Google Hotelfinder expands in the SERPs and functionality

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:41:00 +0100

Having launched their own metasearcher almost 2 years ago for the US market and US hotels, Google has gradually rolled out to more international properties. There have been numerous tests in the SERPs like this, but nothing more than the regular 1% of total traffic test. The date box and star class links are found on many hotel searches in the UK and seems to have passed the 1% testing status.

Also, Google launched the ‘rooms’ tab on the hotel level. This function was already present in most meta’s and Google now gets on par with them on this. It is still being rolled out over all OTA’s, as I only see Expedia (not Hotels.com or their affiliates) and Booking showing up.

Another new feature is the ability to filter on amenities and the Zagat scores. Would be cool to be able to filter on the type of traveler as well. (like Tripadvisor has family, friends, business, romantic)

Lastly I found Kayak is advertising amongst the other OTAs, with their EAN (Expedia Affiliate Network) product. After clicking and landing on the Kayak hotel page, it’s only 1 click to the search results of Kayak, the direct Hotelfinder competition…

All these developments confirm that there’s a lot of attention for this product. One might wonder if Google will follow Kayak, Hotelscombined and the lot in the book direct functionality. What say you?

Kayak paddles into blue Priceline ocean.

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:31:00 +0100

By now most of you will have read the news about Priceline PLC (Booking.com, Agoda, Active Hotels, TravelJigsaw) acquiring Kayak (including Swoodoo and CheckFelix) for a record amount of $500 million in cash and $1,3 billion in PLCN equity. Just in time to become the word around Philip Wolff’s last campfire at PhoCusWright. The consequences of this OTA-meta-marriage will certainly not go unnoticed. I’m going to let my fantasies run wild and list a few of the synergies that lie ahead for the behemoth.

Leveraging sheer market share.

The two complement each other brilliantly between North America and the European market. Kayak is the household brand for Americans seeking inspiration or comparing travel whether it’s flight, hotel or car. It will be of great aid to Priceline, who’s not dominating Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia like Booking is in Europe.

Kayak has been far less successful building their brand in the quilted continent Europe. The Sidestep acquisition brought Kayak immediate US market dominance, a far cry from their EU position after snagging up German Swoodoo and Austrian CheckFelix. Tripadvisor has the most traffic across Europe, every country is a different race in which Trivago, Skyscanner, Tripadvisor, Kayak and local flavor fights the throne. See the UK numbers below.

Enter Booking, the elephant in the meta porcelain cabinet in Europe. They have a huge power over comparison engines for the simple reason that you’re not comparing if you are not showing their inventory. You bet this advantage is leveraged at the CPC/CPA negotiation tables. Imagine what would happen if Kayak gets the upper hand on that inventory, leaving others with hardly or no remuneration at all?

Competitive intelligence

Surely Priceline was shopping the rates of all major competitors, now they have insight in the rates and availability of all integrated parties, for free! No need to pay rate shoppers anymore. This means they know exactly which hotel is not on par with them. When rate parity sunsets, they’ll know how other OTA’s are yielding the prices in order to act upon this. Asides rate info, imagine what you can do with knowledge on origin and destination level from an early stage channel like Kayak? Steer inventory teams; follow up by marketing efforts ahead of your competition.

Customer intelligence

These guys all have their CRM in good shape, what would happen if they’d open some of it up to the others? The OTA would be able to retarget meta users outside Kayak, non bookers would be seeing Kayak banners to entice them to do another search. Kayak has been really smart with their rate alerts over email. This closed channel could be used to have the negotiator make a deal or Booking to offer a closed environment rate like they do in their proprietary newsletter. When a user leaves Kayak to one of the sister companies, you could parse data like filters used, sorting applied, area searched in order to streamline the experience.

Leveraging industry relationships

When talking to airlines and hotels, volume is king. If you can sell more of their products, remuneration goes up. The industry relationships can leverage the air sales through Kayak and Priceline to sweeten the deal. At the same time the hotel sales through Kayak (guess who will fuel the Book with Kayak soon?) and the other labels will mean hoteliers see even more sales coming in from Priceline.

Building brands

All are very conscientious building a brand, in order to increase direct traffic and CTR / conversion rate and become less dependent on paid traffic sources. Sharing knowledge on branding campaigns on- and offline and getting the best group rate for your GRP on TV, cross brand advertising, you name it.

Technical know how

Both Booking and Kayak have the cutting edge mobile and tablet apps in travel. Asides being able to dominate the mobile advertising space, there’s much value in sharing technical information as well. Strengthen bonds with Android, iOS, etc. How do you go about measuring customers across devices, harnessing the full potential of the lifetime value within the Priceline group? A nice challenge for the data crunchers.

Concluding

This move is one that puts enormous power in the PCLN camp. These people are smart and can think of much more synergies than I listed above. It will not make life easier on the other OTA’s. I bet you’ll see them teaming up with ‘the other meta’s’ to counter this move. Trivago and Skyscanner should be happy, seeing their value increase. Pricing will be an important weapon, if other meta’s have better rates from the OTA’s than Kayak, why not use them? On Tnooz reactions are mixed, Dorian from Skoosh questioned if competition authorities would approve it. I’m curious to see how they’ll go about harvesting the synergies; in the current group the labels seem pretty separated outside some industry relations on the hotel side. Who knows this is buying a profitable travel company which might come in handy at a later stage, when the competition makes a move in meta.

Thanks for reading and would love to hear your thoughts!

Disclaimer: the above article is my view and has no relation to my employer.

Pimp your about us page and hire more good people!

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:11:00 +0200

Any growing company is facing the recruitment challenge, Easytobook.com is no exception to this. To entice potential employees it is important to have a great product, have customers/employees/press talk about it in a positive way and have a competitive package. As you are competing with huge companies when it comes to recruiting the best, you have to stand out in your about us page. This is why we asked Delphine Gidoin to go around our office and capture our people in their natural habitat, as well as this great infographic artist (amongst other things) to create an infographic about our diverse and international workforce. Already we got very positive feedback from HR professionals, let me know what you think and if you know people that might be interested in one of our job openings! :) Since we’ve implemented the apply now functionality we see a significant increase in applications, I am sure this will only increase with the recent changes.

Tourism in Amsterdam SFW [infographic]

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 15:14:00 +0200

This infographic is powered by Easytobook.com

Some say it’s insane, we think it’s brilliant.This...

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:30:00 +0200

Some say it’s insane, we think it’s brilliant.

This morning at 6:30AM, our kick ass techies gathered to witness a not so ordinary commitment of code to the live environment. The old site of Easytobook.com, with the look and feel that dated back from 2008, was cast aside. Like a Phoenix from the ashes, our new design arose. Some say this is insanity, we think it’s pure brilliance. To have faith in your creativity, your commitment to and interaction with guests to make it work, your pure love for the code. No AB test was used to achieve this, only user interaction through interview, user tests, screencasts and labtests. The result is a very clean and slick site, that let’s users just fly through it as if they’re half way to their destination. From this position we can use this new code to perform MVT on new features and content to move further into becoming the hotel matchmaker for all travelers.

Check out all the destinations and hotels you might travel one day.

Dutch readers can click to Marketingfacts to read the rest of the story.
Leading travel tech blog Tnooz has published it as guest post.

Ramping up for IPO: "book with Kayak"

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 21:48:00 +0200

Wouter Blok

See the full gallery on Posterous

The ‘book with Kayak’ option is now the US default when selecting a hotel through one of the world’s biggest metasearchers in travel. For a website that became big through providing impartial comparison in hotel rates, this is an interesting choice. Is Kayak becoming an OTA?

When an IPO is luring from the horizon, spectacular growth is no longer an option. If you’ve integrated all mayor and minor suppliers in the world, launched killer apps on mobile and pads and built a brand name to reckon with, Kayak is destined to find means to grow faster. One way is to streamline the customer experience, save on a click out and provide a booking engine in your site. Since March 2011, Kayak is offering this whitelabel book option through World Choice Travel. In November Expedia’s EAN product was added. A clear choice to move closer to hotels and monitizing the trusted brand. The ‘book with kayak’ has been on top of the results, even though the rates were not the lowest. This step enabled Kayak to take the last step of the booking path, from comparing to booking, in their own hands. No doubt it comes with an impressive pricetag for the OTA delivering supply. Last Wednesday the US traffic from the site of Kayak to OTA’s saw a significant drop. When searching with a US IP you quickly see why…The ‘select’ button which used to take a visitor ready to compare rates to the overview of rates and OTA’s, now takes you to the booking screen to book with Kayak. The only way to get to the old compare all rates page is to click on the hotel name. For any OTA outside Orbitz, getting your deal seen is now quite challenging. In the US the two parties have an exclusivity deal which is means Orbitz and it’s labels will be the only ones shown with rates. (more on this in this post on Tnooz)

This drastic new flow surely will have boosted Kayak’s traffic to the white label. But will it increase revenue enough to counter the drop in click outs at a royal CPC or CPA? And will the price minding visitor like it, if it’s directed to book a rate that’s not the lowest? Will it even notice the less transparent Kayak?

Tweets to remember from the #wac12 Workshops

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:44:00 +0100

#wac12: Even Google Analytics uses Google Analytics

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:40:00 +0100

The Hippo slayer Avinash

Once every leap year, the HiPPO slayer himself comes to The Netherlands: Avinash Kaushik.(twitter) Jeroen Tjepkema of Measureworks got hold of 2 days in his agenda and flew him in for the only true conference in Holland on webanalytics.

I love his blog, am currently using his measurement model to align our company on goals, kpi’s and targets considering the site and his books sit on a bookshelf. That he was such an engaging speaker I did not know. Below a wordcloud of the oneliners that resonated with me.

He is a big fan of smart kpi’s, any company should be able to capture their site in 5-6 of them. All reporting for the sake of reporting should be abolished (Agree!) and therefore he was not sad the new Google Analytics dropped the PDF export function ("sending pdf’s is stupid!"). As a digital marketing evangelist for Google, you’d think he’s all in favor of their own analytics product. However he thinks the way the useful data (bounces, goal value and conversion rate) sits in 3 reports is not very handy ("this is crap"). For those who haven’t looked beyond the standard, you can pull them in 1 custom report. The reverse goal path he finds one of the most useless reports in the system. Also the conversion attribution through multichannel funnels needs to be improved. ("it sucks") He rather exports the ‘smart grouped’ data into a nice Java script library to make awesome ‘starbursts’. (circle below) Contact your local developer to help you on that one. The ‘flow’ graph is ideal to show trends in keyword traffic data, when is “mother’s day gifts" peaking, how early starts the “romantic hotel valentine’s day"?

When I asked him if Google uses it’s own product (and I mean more than just dogfeeding), the answer was yes. They make screenshots and videos in the account of the Google store. Also the Google Analytics itself is tracked by…Google Analytics. This will get nice Droste Effects like the first image in this post. :) Of course I wanted to know more about the hacks they use. Other than the Z-test plugin and the importing of data GA doesn’t track (like site speed data?) he could not elaborate.

Dashboards beyond GA

To become a true analytics wizzard you’d need to export the GA data into a datawarehouse, where you can add stuff like sitespeed, actual revenue (in our case trips can be cancelled up to 24 hours before arrival) and customer history to create kick ass lifetime value analysis and predictions. Tools like Trakkboard (presented by Martijn Verstrepen), Tableausoftware (mentioned by ING) and Geckoboard can be used as a visualization layer on top of this.

Qualitative vs Quantitative data
In many presentations, but predominately Matthew Niederberger’s (Thomas Cook) it became evident that drilling for oil is most successfull using both. And making sure you intertwine the usertest data well with your analytics data to ensure the right conclusions to be drawn. Avinash: “always include your CEO in the user test, they make stupid comments about the site". Some tools that you should check out:

Usertesting.com
Loop11.com/
kissinsights.com
fivesecondtest.com

Other mentionable visualization tools from the Adversitment workshop:

www.maani.us (SWF charts)
www.wordle.com (for wordcloud creation)
www.dipity.com (timeline visualization)
dataviz.tumblr.com (lots and lots of infographics)
www.perceptualedge.com

I did not attend the morning on the second day, which featured both Matthew Niederberger and (again, but you just can’t overdo this) Avinash. The sessions with Reevoo and Bol.com were also informative but I won’t go into detail on those or the ones that were less than informative :). Kudoos to BBP, who did a great job on the venue and line up.

Easytobook.com launching partner new platform Tripadvisor.

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:41:42 +0100

Beginning February we at Easytobook.com finalized the integration of the Tripadvisor reviews in our site. We’re the first party world wide that is live with their new review platform. The changes to the old platform are mainly speed, being able to ask own review questions and the level of customization.

Unlike many travel brands who started using the Tripadvisor iframe, Easytobook.com DID have a proprietary review system, which had collected many hundreds of thousands reviews. Why kill this beautiful way of collecting fresh unique content any self respecting SEO would say? Hold your Panda’s. First we’re keeping the old reviews, while publishing fresh and unique content in the new situation. The number of ETB reviews is dwarfed by the 60 million reviews that Tripadvisor boasts. Meaning many hotels did not have sufficient review content if at all. Third, the review collection with our guests is also done through Tripadvisor, which means the vast user base of Tripadvisor doesn’t have to leave a review twice. For Tripadvisor, partnering with OTA’s means a growing base of ‘verified reviews’, by acually stayed guests, where you are more certain of the sincerity of the content.

As an OTA, we’re very happy to be partnering with a trusted brand in the industry. It means a worldwide coverage in reviews on hotel properties, which helps our guest in making their decision. The down side of having a proprietary system is that you need to maintain it and moderate in case of profanity or moderate in case of disputes about the correctness of a review. This will now be done by Tripadvisor. Now we can focus on what we do best, delivering a great experience in searching and finding your hotel.

As soon as we streamlined the review process, we expect to end up with at least the conversion of booking to review as before, but without the cost of the system. Second, all the review content on destinations where we had zero to none review, will perform much better.

Less than a week after we went live, Kayak integrated the Tripadvisor reviews as well. This is reported on MSNBC with a screenshot where Easytobook.com is nicely visible. :)
By the way, the Tripadvisor rating filter shown in the release has not rolled out yet to the EU.

Here you can find the joint press release.

Meta for and by hotel chains: will it stick?Yesterday six major...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:37:00 +0100

Meta for and by hotel chains: will it stick?

Yesterday six major global chains have joined forces, bought hotelicopter and used their technology to create their own metasearcher: Roomkey.com. A very interesting move to regain control over the distribution of their inventory and the cost of getting it filled. The aspirations are big, from a launch with 23.000 hotels, they will grow to 80.000 end of the year and 120.000 is the predicted ceiling. This site will market itself as the place to go to if you want to book direct, and try to get in on the action with the likes of Kayak, Hotelscombined and Google Hotelfinder.

There has been great insightful responses to the two articles on Tnooz, one of which was a great history lesson by Rober Kole. This is not the first time hotels become allies. The thought is great, get market share in the meta market and omit OTA’s. You’ll be able to get the bookings in directly and save on commission. The challenge here is exactly that: get market share.

Because Roomkey is a direct competitor of all metasearchers and Google itself, it will not be able to tap into that huge pool of traffic. It will have to invest in SEA for quick traction. Good luck on that one with a product that has a fraction of the hotels in general meta, a subpar UX/UI, less offers (only cheapest room, no special deals / packages like OTA’s), without a direct booking option. SEO is another channel it could tap into, when all the brands would link to it, the PR machines join efforts and the content will be king it certainly stands a chance. However, would a hotel chain want this meta to rank even near it’s own site? And how long before Google pushes it’s own meta in the top results?

In the end all participating chains will have to pay the bill for sourcing the traffic. They have now the OTA commission to get the job done. With a kick ass marketing team that can build the brand and rock in SEM, a huge inventory and improved UX/UI (Hotelicopter team can do so much better than this) they could just pull it off to have the same cost of distribution as through an OTA or meta. Another one to keep an eye on.

Special thanks to my colleague Helena Perera who pointed me to the official press release.

Google & affiliates: Can’t live with ‘m,...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:47:00 +0100

Google & affiliates: Can’t live with ‘m, can’t live without ‘m.

This infographic I found on SEObook. It describes well how there’s no clear line in the strategy towards affiliates, some seem more equal than others. A befriended travel affiliate that had a very unique website, usability was very creative, got kicked out without warning. Just because he linked to us and other travel merchants for the booking process. Another friend had a metasearcher in travel which was put offline without warning, while Kayak, Hotelscombined and Google’s own pricecomparison site keeps on advertising.

A very opaque situation where the love affiliates received years ago, has grown stone cold.

Internet Marketing Infographic by SEO Book

Adwords position 1 just got even more dominant

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:37:00 +0100

See the full gallery on Posterous

Another 1% test caught by my easytobook.com colleague Salah Marechal. (AKA the professional Googler)
When searching for “hotel Paris" in Google.com, the autocomplete shows a new ad format taking you to the www.parislasvegas.com site. It’s the top result in Adwords that gets this prime position, boosting the 30% click through rate to even more staggering hights. And as a nice bonus for Google, preventing that the user clicks on one of the ‘cheaper’ ads on the page.

This particular hotel also has the top result in SEO, even above the Places 7-pack. Well done guys!

The test could indicate a move towards becoming more of a decision engine like Bing aspires to be, rather than showing millions of results. A very unhealthy situation for the auction that has made Google what it is today. The less clicks go to number 2+, the more fierce the fight will be over pole position. Only one wins this fight…it’s Google. Even in the current situation, the number one spot has a ‘stay out’ benefit that prevents any other challenger from making healthy profits by outbidding it. Because the CTR is so rediculously high, it is impossible to beat the quality score of the number one. Google has ‘normalized’ the CTR for ad position, but I know from experience that you have to bid over €10,- to outbid a “hotel in cityname" leader. This regardless of the normalization, and the high quality score we have.

Every step towards creating the first spot a more desirable one is good news for the one in that spot, or the one with the deepest pockets.

Update: Gert-Jan Delcliseur responded on G+, mentioning (thanks!) a post back from 2008 on Searchengineland. Apparantly they’re still doing the tests (why do the same test for 4 years?), without concrete roll out. Back in 2008 they didn’t have instant search, which makes it a handy feature. To me it would only make sense on a mobile phone, nowadays.

Google Schemer: social activity planner or bucket list?You may...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:32:00 +0100

Google Schemer: social activity planner or bucket list?

You may missed this one, but Google bought Zagat a while back and reshaped it into an activity platform called Schemer. You can think of anything to do, like diving with Manta’s to pottery and find people that want to join. After it’s invite only launch a week back, I finally had the time to join some schemes! Check out my profile here.

To me it seems more like a bucket list at the moment than a true platform where you can plan activities with like minded. Sure people add Schemes and show what experiences they’ve had, but it doesn’t get much further than a ‘to do’ or ‘been there’. If locals would really add content to what is cool in their area, then it has a potential to become relevant to travelers. Until that time I see little relevance with Google’s verticals Hotelfinder and Flights.

Get real transactional content in there, with book links towards the companies or people that are really up for it and it becomes more of a social commerce site for activities. At the moment I’m seeing lots of duplicate Schemes with just tags, no real life stories nor pictures. Also, having it in such a closed beta again really limits the Schemes building up around the globe.

I’m guessing this one is going where Buzz went, being recycled in Google+, unless they enriche the true travel/activity experience in the broad launch.

Anyone in for an invite? I have 20 so just click on this link and register!

Twitter embeds tweets everywhere, also on Posterous.Yesterday I...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:20:00 +0100

Twitter embeds tweets everywhere, also on Posterous.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this news on TNW in my Google Currents reader, so I thought let’s give it a try on Posterous.

Just by copying the URL of the tweet, it should be embedded. So here it goes…

Got to test this on posterous! The Next Web: Twitter just made it a whole lot easier to embed tweetsanywhere on the Web goo.gl/mag/dGsBZ
— Wouter Blok (@WouterBlok) December 8, 2011

This should be great for new followers, RT’s, replies and overall interaction with your blog and tweets. Now I have to go back through all my blogposts and enter the URL’s :).

Sweet new stuff from Google: Currents hits the US devices

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:22:00 +0100

See the full gallery on Posterous

Google’s long awaited Flipboard killer has arrived: Google Currents. It’s a very nicely designed app for iPhone, Android and tablets which contains titles like Forbes, Mashable and our own dutch pride The Next Web. Finally I can use my Google reader again to hook up other feeds! It seems these are showing less content than the 90 partners Google started working with though.

Introducing Google Currents, a new reader app for Android and iOS that gives you new ways to explore online content: goo.gl/0GCej
— Google Mobile (@GoogleMobile) December 8, 2011

Strangely, from the settings page I cannot sign into my Services like FB and instapaper. This is done from an article by clicking the share option. Settings menu is only for singing out. Not logical. And there’s more weird navigational loopholes to be found, settings are found in your homescreen, but also in the editors choice menu. This makes no sense to me. In the page transitions of 500px I get a white stripe on the right side, and the menu bar changes color. Minor bugs that will probably be filtered out in the next version.

Very powerful is that the reader is fast! It downloads all the content as soon as you open the app. While you’re reading other articles, there is no need to wait for pictures to load. (watch out with roaming costs though)!

I still think Flipboard rocks in it’s simplicity and sleek transitions, but Currents has more content and sharing/services options. I keep on swiping up and down for the next page, butt Currents’ navigation is left-right.

But seriously Google, where’s the post to Google+ ?? And why can’t I read my FB content?

Google Currents Producer

Enough sour stuff, I just took a dive in Google Currents Producer and I’m pretty impressed.
When your managing a blog or multiple, you can see how these are picked up in Currents and change pictures, favicons, splashpages to create the best experience on all devices. It allows you to add media like a Youtube channel or Flickr feed. Only thing you have to do to get started is copy paste a verification code.

Google Analytics can be inserted as well via the UA code, so you know how many people read your articles inside Currents. As soon as Google Social Media Hub goes live imagine what data you’d be able to get. :)