Louis Halpern's View

With more than a few years experience in helping Hotel brands optimise their web presence, it still never fails to amaze me just how many hotels and booking agents seem to get it wrong when it comes to website usability. Such a high proportion of the industry’s business is transacted online that you would think that ensuring your website is quick and easy to use would be no-brainer. The reality is, though, that nearly half the websites you visit are a long way of the mark.

My team at Halpern Cowan have started the process of collating our expertise on what exactly makes a the best possible online booking user journey and hotel website. We’re now engaged in a research process asking consumers what puts them off making a booking on a website to add to the knowledge base. We’ve analysed the top hotel and booking sites to see how well they fair from an audience point of view.

The results that we’re seeing paint a fairly consistent picture – for a whole variety of reasons, some of the UK’s major hotel chains are losing business by failing to provide their customers with an optimised online experiences.

There is so much for brands to consider when it comes to developing a website that will have a direct impact on conversions, to name just a few:

• the right message on the landing page

• positioning & accessibility of the search & advanced search functions

• Search Engines results display

• Pricing display

• Booking options

• Login sections

• Purchase information display

• Functionality enabling customers to easily compare different options and change their demands.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The above criteria may seem pretty straightforward on paper but it is amazing how many brands overlook or don’t prioritise the little things which all add up to have a significant impact on their sales.

I will post full details of our Online Hotel Usability Report soon – watch this space…

In spite of waning audience figures, and cancellation for Channel 4, the last Endemol production of Big Brother is gaining unwelcome attention from cybersquatters and online speculators.
In a statement on June 11th, Andrew Robertson, the series’ digital executive producer at Endemol, said the company wanted “to make the online elements integral to the show, so what happens in the house is directly affected by people engaging online.” The official Big Brother website this year is integrated with Facebook Connect and ties in with Twitter and YouTube.
However, beyond the show’s official website and social media profiles, online speculators have been surreptitiously registering multiple domain names and social media profiles relating to this year’s contestants. The cyber squatters are either trying to cash in on users looking for official housemate websites by running online ads or by ‘brand jack’ the website of the eventual winner.
According to our analysis of web domains and profiles relating to the Big Brother Candidates, the majority of the housemates have fallen victim of brand hijacking:

• The most cybersquatted housemate is Caoimhe Guilfoyle, giving an indicator of who the speculators are backing to win. Over the last week, cybersquatters have registered domains such as: www.caoimheguilfoyle.com, www.caoimheguilfoyle.co.uk, www.caoimheguilfoyle.net and www.caoimheguilfoyle.info

• The next most popular are Josie Gibson, Ife Kuku, Rachael White, Corin Forshaw and Mario Mugan who, in the past week have each had  a combination of three potential domain names registered (.com,.co.uk, .net, .info)

• Only two housemates have escaped – Ben Duncan and Dave Vaughan – a sign that speculators don’t rate their chances of winning

Beyond speculators, some unofficial online fan groups and blogs are growing for the housemates but, without moderation, these are receiving negative as well as positive comment: Josie, Mario, Rachael and Corin also have the dubious honour of having gained unofficial blogs since going into the house, which feature blog posts such as ‘Corin Forshaw’s bisexual romps’ and ‘Rachael White likes skinny ginger guys’
It seems ironic that the producers of a show about monitoring people 24/7 has failed to monitor the basic online profiles of its contestants.

Endemol has obviously done some work in advising the housemates on how to protect their online reputations as none have publicly viewable social networking profiles, but it seems clear that it  has not done much to advise them how they will be able to manage their fifteen minutes of fame online once out of the house.

For a company who have made a lot of noise about Big Brother’s influence on the web, they have missed a fairly obvious trick here. It is easy to buy a domain name but much harder to get it back once someone else owns it.

There is no reason why a non-tech savvy and – before they entered the house – non-celebrity housemate should know what steps to take to protect their celebrity personas online. Contestants on a public show should really have received more professional advice on how to protect their online reputation.

I’ve been asked by a much loved client to write some notes on Internet Trends that I think are important at the moment..   So here are my thoughts

Ubiquitous Internet
The web will be accessible anywhere all the time. WiFi, WiMax, 3G & 4G will all take their part to allow us to use the internet everywhere all the time.

Mobile
Smartphone usage will continue to increase.
Mobile payments will become one of the preferred methods for payment. The iTunes Store has lead the way and there are interesting services like Square (www.squareup.com) surfacing to change how you and I can utilize our phones to pay for stuff while on the move.

Media consumption
Consumers are empowered. Combine this with further advances in technology, will mean the media will become more:

• distributed as the same content will pop up in multiple locations, formats and channels
• personalised as media will be tailored to reflect what consumers have watched, read, experienced and shared.
• contextualised as when, where and how consumers get their information will dictate its format, which will shape how they interact with and share the information.

Big Screens
The emergence of Google TV demonstrates two things:

• humans understand the best way to find things (read TV show for now) is to use the familiar simple search interface rather than sift though hundred of choices
• computer screens are going to grow rather than shrink

Brand engagement
Brands will need to figure out how to engage the community so they have two way conversations rather than marketing by interruption.

Social Media will become the largest component of web usage
Neilson reports that social media use grew by 82% in the last year becuase the web has become an efficient platform for communication. As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses must invest more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent “Tribalization of Business” study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will increase their investment in online communities and social media.

Keyboards will move towards extinction
Text-based interactions are going to become a minor component of our web experience. Touchscreen interfaces and motion sensors are driving alternatives to the keyboard and mouse which means, our reliance on: videos, social games like FarmVille, and interactive delivery interfaces like the iPhone OS will grow rapidly.

I’ve been researching statistics about the iPhone for a presentation I’m doing tomorrow and thought I’d share the following:

- average total number of unit sales for apps is 101,024 copies

- 1m UK iPhone Units passed on 27 Feb 2009

- 7% of users have only free apps

- 38% of iphone app purchases are in the entertainment category

If anybody has any similar statistics please share with me….

I’ll add sources in due course.

With the final live debate days away, Labour is leading the race when it comes to celebrity endorsements on Twitter. With a combined reach of 1,760,608 users, Labour has harnessed by far the most celebrity endorsement influence on Twitter. With only 27m voting in 2005, this influence is likely to give the party a significant boost when the country goes to the polls on 6 May.

The Liberal Democrats came a distant second to Labour with a celebrity reach of 74,121 Twitter-users, followed by the Green Party on 18,366, and the Conservatives on 11,138. Political campaigner and stand-up comedian Mark Thomas, who is using his Twitter feed to support Bristol independent Danny Kushlick, for whom he has written/compiled a manifesto, has 12,244 followers.

In assessing the political leanings of 150 celebri-twits, Halpern Cowan have found that the majority of Britain’s top celebrities are deliberately avoiding getting involved in political debates online, but that a core of very vocal celebrities are wielding considerable influence. Celebrity endorsements for Labour on Twitter come courtesy of Eddie Izzard (who has just recorded a television spot for the party), actor and comedian Alan Davies, and Duncan Bannatyne. Prominent Lib Dem supporters on Twitter include Boy George and actor and presenter Robert Llewellyn. Comedian Marcus Brigstocke is publicly backing the Green Party in his constituency of Brighton.

We’ve seen politicians take to Twitter like ducks to water for a ‘social media election’ but they can still only dream of getting as much of a popularity surge as celebrities do from the platform; people follow the politicians whose views they already agree with, so candidates using Twitter are just preaching to the choir. Celebrities, on the other hand are trusted ‘faces’ who can influence voters across the political spectrum and across the country, get the apathetic to vote, swing the undecideds, and give politicians a much-needed boost to their online reputation.

Of course, celebs also have a lot to lose by announcing their politics on Twitter. If you’re famous and want to stay that way you need to appeal to as much of the public as possible, but taking sides on the kind of divisive issues at stake in the election is likely to turn a lot of people off, which is probably why most keep mum or stick to making jokes about Britain’s politics. Nevertheless, as it stands if the celebrity con-twit-uency went to the polls today, it would be a Labour landslide.