The strongest message your website can deliver

Here's an interesting article on Entrepreneur.com. Of the '10 Things Customers Want on a Website', many are obvious: At number 2 - 'A clear sense of what your company offers' and even more so at 3 - 'Contact information, including a phone number and physical location'.

But it's numbers 4 and 8 that interest us the most - partly because so few businesses are yet incorporating them...

And...

Entrepreneur went on to reference an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled 'To Keep your Customers Keep it Simple'...

"The single biggest driver of stickiness, by far, was “decision simplicity”—the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product."

and...

"User reviews and ratings are front and center there [a successful case history], and a navigation tool lets consumers quickly find reviews that are relevant to their intended use."

Look at a client of ours who has recently redesigned their homepage from a potential client's perspective. They've included... 

• 'View what our customers say' in the main header 

• Dynamic Display in the heart of their home page

• Dialogue - for potential clients to view credible and verified testimonials

We think the message it sends out to potential clients is clear: If you're considering an estate agent in Hertford our clients think we're great at what we do - contact us!

(and, by the way, it's great for SEO as well!)

Perhaps there's an idea for a New Year's Resolution here!

TripAdvisor - all change at the top?

You heard it here - Liberty Interactive has taken control of TripAdvisor (read the full Financial Times online article here).

It's too soon to make guesses as to how this might affect our hotelier clients, but were going to contribute our twopenny-worth anyway.

What does HelpHound think the new 'Liberty TripAdvisor' should do?

A big number 1 is 'communicate': TripAdvisor needs to invest heavily in client services - meaning employing high-grade people on the ground who hoteliers can rely on for advice and assistance.

Number 2: a massive investment in systems to 'clean up the site' - end the 'assumption of innocence' where reviewers are concerned. Far too many reviews (and reviewers) are not what or who they purport to be: genuine guests.

Number 3: End the current 'ranking' system, in favour of scores like Booking.com. Ranking one hotel above or below another is meaningless and leads to the 'one winner, everyone else a loser' situation that currently prevails at TripAdvisor.

All in all: care more about not biting the hand that feeds - the OTAs pay TripAdvisor commissions paid for by the hotels. TripAdvisor charges the hotels. Stop hiding behind the 'it's the consumer who pays' excuse (tell that to hotels who cannot increase their rates in an intensively competitive market).

Yelp - review filter working OK??

A flurry of activity surrounding Yelp recently - a builder in Washington DC is suing a Yelper for posting a defamatory review. The case is ongoing, but Yelp has been sufficiently concerned that they have deleted her review.

But that's not what intrigued us most: Yelp make much of their 'review filter' (see their explanation here) but it is working most mysteriously for Deitz Development's listing; a quick scan reveals eleven 1 star reviews, all posted in the last week, from 'customers' from as far afield as California, Ohio and Texas. Now, either Mr Deitz gets about a bit in search of work, or these are simply Yelpers driving the business's rating down because they don't like his legal stance.

Time to look again at your filter, Yelp?

2012 - a year in Review

Now seems as good a time as any to bring everyone up-to-date with developments during 2012

2012 was the year that Dialogue proved itself:

• to the hotel trade, by improving relative rankings and scores for our clients 

• to estate agents, by helping them demonstrate their professionalism

• to clients in a multitude of other verticals - from employment agencies to solicitors

It was also the year that we introduced a fundamental improvement: Dynamic Display - helping our clients show live reviews to their prospective customers, streamed from Dialogue straight to a tailor-made screen on their home pages.

And a round-up of the most popular blog posts of 2012...

At number 1 - Blackmail, addressing an all-too-frequent issue faced by our hotel clients, but not far behind in second place: Well done Castles relating one estate agent's experience with Dialogue; then it's back to hotels with Scores Rise on Booking.com about our results for clients on that crucial OTA.  Just outside the medals was TripAdvisor face-to-face with our report on their session at the Independent Hotels 12 expo.

Estate Agents - Dialogue in a nutshell

Now that results for Dialogue have been conclusively proven, our clients are increasingly being asked about Dialogue by their clients and business connections.  A client asked one of our advisors for a short description of Dialogue that they could pass on and it was so well received they suggested we post it here...

Dialogue for estate agents:

• Shows great client opinions on the agent's own site - reassuring potential clients
• Deflects negatives away from public sites
• Aids conversion - see a client's comment here
• increases the flow of positives to sites like Google Local

There you are! There is more - improved employee morale (leading to improved staff retention), great feedback for management and so on, but the core of Dialogue's value is contained in those four bullet points - even more so since the introduction of Dynamic Display. 

And remember...

...we reward our clients who recommend us!

Hotels - Dialogue in a nutshell

Now that results for Dialogue have been conclusively proven, our clients are increasingly being asked about Dialogue by their clients and business connections.  A client asked one of our advisors for a short description of Dialogue that they could pass on and it was so well received they suggested we post it here...

Dialogue for hotels:

• Shows great guest opinions on the hotels own site - encouraging direct booking
• Deflects negatives away from external sites, and in doing so...
• ...enhances rankings and scores on TripAdvisor and Booking.com and all other OTAs
• increases the flow of positives to sites like TripAdvisor and Google Local

There you are! There is more - improved employee morale (leading to improved staff retention), great feedback for management and so on, but the core of Dialogue's value is contained in those four bullet points - even more so since the introduction of Dynamic Display. 

And remember...

...we reward our clients who recommend us!