You’ve successfully migrated your ticket sales online. Your e-commerce ‘storefront’ is humming and your dynamic pricing strategy is generating higher yield and overall revenue. Your job here is done, right? Well, not really. Now it’s time to optimize your overall e-commerce engine by honing in on key metrics that are the most important drivers of your online sales and pricing ecosystem. By analyzing and optimizing these metrics, you can ensure that your direct online sales channel will be generating the most revenue possible.

Here are six metrics to include in your reporting pack:

 

Searches per visit

How to measure it:
# of date-specific searches / annual visits to your resort or attraction

Why does it matter?
Searches per visit is a top-funnel metric that normalizes the number of date-specific searches in your online store based on the size of your resort or attraction. You can think of this as a ‘per capita’ metric that helps put your online sales efficiency in perspective. Catalate’s Cloud Store e-commerce platform is unique in that they allow operators to measure day-level intent.

Conversion Rate

How to measure it:
# of transactions / # of site sessions (not unique users)

Why does it matter?
Your site’s conversion rate is a mid-funnel metric that allows you to measure relative site performance. By looking at your conversion rate, you can better calculate ROI on marketing campaigns and even see which channels are most efficient in converting lookers into bookers. Expressed as a percentage, conversion rate shows how many site visitors actually convert into paying guests.

Demand Capture

How to measure it:
# of guest days booked / # searches

Why does it matter?
Demand capture provides a measure of conversion rate based on the number of guest days booked compared to date-specific searches into your e-commerce engine. In this case, it displays conversion at the trip-day level, allowing you to examine the performance of specific dates relative to one another. Generally, we look to see that demand capture is consistent from day-to-day, which signifies that days are priced appropriately for demand.

For example, by regularly looking at demand capture, you might see that certain days of the week or month under or over-perform. This can then be used to optimize pricing, by incentivizing site visitors to book certain days or times.

A reading on-demand capture can expose interesting shifts in consumer behavior and shopping patterns that you may choose to encourage, or discourage, based on your overall yield or visitation goals.

Revenue per Search

How to measure it:
Date-specific revenue / # of date-specific searches

Why does it matter?
Yet another type of conversion rate, revenue per search helps translate demand capture into dollars and cents. It helps account for product and price differences that don’t show up in demand capture. It can also give an indication of average order value (AOV), which itself is an important metric to keep tabs on.

For example, if you observed that revenue per search on one day was significantly lower than another day, it might indicate that the first day was not priced appropriately, causing conversion rates to suffer. When using revenue per search as a metric, keep in mind that it may be difficult to compare RPS between properties with large variations in prices, as price feeds into the numerator of the metric.

Revenue

How to measure it:
Total bookings for date-specific products

Here is an example of an end-of-season report provided by Catalate for a ski resort partner.

Why does it matter?
Of course, revenue is the ‘metric of all metrics.’ In the end, your dynamic pricing strategy serves to optimize for and maximize revenue. Therefore, it’s necessary to have regular check-ins against daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal sales goals to ensure you are tracking to target. If revenue is trailing behind, then the next step would be to analyze performance at a more granular level, by looking closely at one or multiple metrics above.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

How to measure it:
Revenue / Marketing dollars or ad spend

Why does it matter?
None of the above metrics really matter if you can’t drive qualified traffic to your website. You or your marketing team likely rely on various channels to acquire direct traffic, such as organic search (SEO), Google Ads (SEM), social media, and email. Knowing how efficiently and effectively your marketing dollars are driving sales is paramount to running a successful e-commerce site, and attractions business overall.
Return on ad spend is a simple metric that shows how much money you are making relative to every dollar you are spending. By optimizing mid-funnel metrics like conversion rate or demand capture, you can be sure that every dollar you spend on marketing leads to the greatest return possible.

Every business is different, but most attractions businesses should consider only factoring in variable marketing costs, such as media spend and advertising dollars. While profitability matters, when calculating ROAS, overhead costs, like your marketing staff, are usually not included.

To learn more about how Catalate’s full-service Analytics, Pricing as a Service (PaaS) and Cloud Store products can help your business make more money online, schedule a demo today.