Bungalow.Net
CASE STUDY
20+ years of business. Operating at Europe scale. Optimization.
During my time at Bungalow.net, I worked with data on the following order of magnitude:
- 30.000+ listed accommodations
- Just shy of 100.000 pages
- 90.000-130.000 Average monthly traffic
- Number of bookings in the 5 figures from 5 years of historical data + valuable data-points per client/booking.
Since then, we pruned the listed accommodations & landing pages to raise overall quality, focus and performance, but the large dataset was invaluable in achieving that and many other optimization efforts through those insights.
Challenge
The challenge was to optimize & improve through perpetual iteration and testing, at scale while running all the necessary systems for smooth operation on a day to day basis.
Outcome
My proudest achievements at Bungalow.Net was the work I did in research and development of optimizing & improving systems and decision-making.
Scope
Strategy & Ideation
Marketing & Advertising
Design:Graphic, Web & Print
Data tracking setup & analysis
Advanced SEO at Scale
Result Highlights
- Spearheading the planning & implementation of advanced & unified Analytics tracking via GTM, Analytics & Database Data
- Pioneering customer segmentation from 5 years worth of booking data, that just sat unexamined.
- Initiating and building data & segmentation insight driven remarketing
Analytics & Data
Realizing the untapped potential of the raw data Bungalow.Net had and could start tracking better I took two key follow-up steps:
1: Historical Data:
I requested a full query of the 5-figure number of bookings in the past 5 years, with all associated (non-uniquely identifying/ sensitive) data points.
This included client information, both demographics and characteristics as well as expressed interest inferred from page navigation & interaction events & key attributes per property.
It was a treasure-trove of data & insight. Even the first layer of analysis yielded the exact popularity levels of single variables that were most common per booking.
Then came the analysis in search of the highest yielding combinations of dimensions, to gain segmentational data by performance by number of bookings & total revenue.
After doing the same quality of analysis on the overall historical user search query data of the website we moved on to improving these capabilities for the future by tracking more variables and linking behavioral event data to bookings.
2: Data Tracking upgrades:
Collaborating with the IT department we started tracking and linking all dynamic events to bookings.
We could already cross reference and combine bookings’ data with page navigational data from Google Analytics, honing in on expressed interest and usage patterns per Segmented main demographic groups.
However the infinite-load javascript search pages didn’t load different URLs for events.
We introduced adding URL parameters for most of the events and pushing some additional relevant data into the Data Layer to capture with GTM and send to Google Analytics, to unite Database, user interaction & GA data.
Understanding
the Audience
The massive segmentational data yielded a clearer understanding of the types of customers Bungalow.Net had, giving way to the ability to build customer avatar profiles for them.
Beyond data points as these, we used heat-maps and anonymous recordings of usage of the website, helping us understand the users better and improve on the website and their overall experience, and thus also the KPIs of the business.
Market Research
Beyond understanding the current audience and clients of the business we always need to understand the wider market as well for context to remain competitive.
Rigurious, perpetual Market Research efforts ran beside all other Marketing efforts. From secondary research to all Qualitative and Quantitative Primary Research methods were employed.
Sure, we could just analyze our own query and search data and learn from keyword usage of custom queries and preset filter usage, but what if by looking at only existing users, we’re missing something big? An entire potential market niche or segment perhaps?
Business Operations
Business Operations can benefit tremendously from analysis as most departments can provide invaluable data, both quantitatively & in experiential feedback.
Each department’s teams have struggles, bottlenecks and inefficiencies that they just don’t have the means and time to deal with.
Solutions can range from implementing simple automations, tools to re-evaluating of roles & responsibilities or the production of new assets they could leverage – to name a few effective examples we encountered.
At bungalow.net some of the highlights include:
- Sales team getting new .pdf brochure & .ppt presentation assets, to present to new potential partners ( holiday accommodation owners/ managers).
- Sales team trained & equipped to find, filter, sort & prioritize leads.
- Product managers got automations & tools to slash time spent on repetitive tasks.
Search Engine Optimization
Segueing into the world of SEO, among many other tools, we must mention Keyword Research in connection with the market research segment. It’s an essential and invaluable tool of gauging the digital online market and consumer psyche, including shifts, both with keyword planner and tools like google trends.
Not to mention the power of monitoring SEO effort results and market shifts via premium tools like SEMRush, SEOMoz Pro, Majestic SEO & Screaming Frog.
Whether it came to On-site or off-site SEO ( page speed, usability, UX, content quality, tags, schema markup, backlinks etc.) we were equipped with the tools and the know-how to deal with the challenges effectively for Bungalow.Net.
From Content Guidelines for the content & translation departments to UI layout wireframes and mockups for the developers, or internal linking strategies and rules, many valuable business-wide improvements across the board were made possible by SEO efforts.
Advertising & Campaigns
The treasure trove of data and insights along with tracking upgrades we discussed in a previous section is where it all starts.
Handled properly, they enabled us to:
- increase ad efficiency & relevance by doing segmented targeting & build out several customer avatar profiles, and use matching copy & visuals for each across all advertising channels.
- Create Segmented & advanced remarketing campaigns (Dynamic Ads for Travel + by avatar dimensions, funnel depth, viewed products & pages, search queries).
- Upgrade the company Newsletter for 20.000+ subscribers (with relevance and quality via segmentation & new HTML responsive formatting).
- Accurately select parties with relevant audiences for Influencer- & Feature Article collaborations.
Funnel Optimization
“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”.
A saying certainly applicable to any funnel. And whether it’s the AD CTR (click through rate), ultimately: the Conversion Rate or any step in between: proper cycles of analysis, iteration & testing are the key to getting the most out of your traffic & serving your audience and customers best.
Print & Partnerships
As a business positioned in the market as a broker between holiday accommodation clients & Accommodation owners and managers, there’s a perpetual need in building and maintaining great relationships with both parties.
The partnerships built with premium holiday park owners for example hinged very much on the ability of the marketing team to convey the right insight from the right data, the ones they cared about, in a professional manner.
These efforts ranged from custom print material to presentations with statistics and concise distillations of our unique value proposition and strengths.
Diversification & Development
Bungalow.net’s website was not the only one the company built and operated.
One highlight is vakantieparken.nl a website dedicated to serving ONLY with holiday park accommodation types (one of the most popular and lucrative ones of all).
But setting up presentation websites for some high-profile holiday park owners Bungalow.net partnered with wasn’t uncommon either. Like sapiniere.nl , parclesetoiles.com/en/ ferienparkgrafschaftbentheim.eu to name a few.
Usually for Fast turnaround projects like these, the platform of choice came to WordPress. My contributions include – in broad strokes but not limited to:
- Wireframing pages’ layouts
- Detailed mockup designs
- Development (plugins, script- & CSS tweaks)
- Content & Graphics
- A/B testing & iterations
Robust Testing
Sadly, it’s often overlooked or executed unprofessionally – but rigorous testing is essential with any digital project.
We use the industry standard checklist:
• Functionality
• Interface (UI)
• Usability
• Performance
• Compatibility
• Security
Results
Bungalow.net finally took a step into a couple of key areas of improvement it had after 20 years of business before working together.
The results of meticulously analyzing years’ of data, setting up advanced tracking & Dynamic Ads for Travel campaigns brought about a sense of taking a big step towards the ingenuity & technology employed by the big guys like Amazon.
And though Bungalow.net isn’t at the Artificial Intelligence world domination stage YET – There’s undoubtedly a remarkable amount of accomplishments that shine through, from everyone who worked on the business in the past 20+ years.
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Testimonial Format Pointers:
- Relevance: The first feature of a really good testimonial is relevance. SpreadFunnel is a Digital Marketing Agency, specializing in scaling & growth for businesses.
Please focus on experiences of challenges and solutions experienced relating to that end. - Identifiable source: Do I have your permission to use your full name, title and link to your website?
(Also: let me know if you want me to change your title, what you’d like it to say). - Specificity: What are some of the technical qualities and results you appreciated & what are any human qualities that made a difference in working together? (what might matter most for someone else looking for marketing services)
Video would be ideal + I can transcribe it for where I’d use text only. But text will do fine as well.
Thank you in advance Wim!
- Relevance: The first feature of a really good testimonial is relevance. SpreadFunnel is a Digital Marketing Agency, specializing in scaling & growth for businesses.
