Glossary of Terms

Assisted Transactions / Revenue

Customers can access your website through a variety of channels before making a booking. For example, a customer might click on a link in an email you send them, then click on a link on a social post, then type in your URL directly and make a booking. Assisted Transactions and Revenue happen when a channel was part of the booking funnel, but was not the channel they made their final purchase through. Both the email channel and the social channel assisted in the transaction that was made in the example provided. Assisted Transactions and Revenue are important to understand, because customers almost always engage with your website through a variety of channels before making a booking.

Backlinks

A backlink is a link from one website to another website. For example, if your local Chamber of Commerce website links to your vacation rental website, then you have a backlink from them. Gaining backlinks from well respected websites can help grow your site’s visibility.

Direct Booking

A direct booking is when a customer makes a booking directly through you, the property manager, rather than a third party site or online travel agency. The customer can make their reservation on your vacation rental website or by phone. If the customer makes their reservation through a third party site like Airbnb that is not a direct booking.

Direct Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Direct traffic is when a person types in your URL directly. For example, if you typed in bluetent.com, you would be considered direct traffic.

Direct Transaction / Revenue

Customers can access your website through a variety of channels before making a booking. For example, a customer might find you on Google, click on a link in an email you send them, then click on a link on a social post before make a booking. Direct Transactions and Revenue happen when a customer accesses your website and makes a purchase in the same session. The social channel led to the Direct Transaction and Revenue in the example provided, since the customer clicked on the link in the social post and then made a reservation. The Organic channel and the Email channel both assisted in the conversion in this example (ie an Assisted Conversion).

Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Ecommerce Conversion Rate is calculated as follows:
Sessions / Transactions X 100 = Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Ecommerce Conversion Rate tells us how often customers make a booking when accessing the site. It is a good metric to understand if the user experience on the site is adequate.

Email Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Email traffic is when a person clicks on a link from an email to access your website. For example, if you sent out an email advertising special rates for a holiday and someone clicked on a link they would be considered email traffic.

Goal Completion

Aside from making a booking, there are several key actions we want customers to take on vacation rental websites. These actions include items like inquiring about a specific property through a website form, filling out a general “contact us” form, signing up for email marketing and more. These actions can be setup as goals in Google Analytics, that way we can understand how effective marketing strategies are. A Goal Completion is when a customer or potential customer completes one of our defined goals.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an analytics service that tracks and reports on website traffic metrics. Bluetent sets up Google Analytics for website and marketing clients in order to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free, online listing tool where you can manage your presence across Google, including search and maps. Google My Business is an important tool for local SEO presence and all property management companies should have a listing for each office they operate.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a free reporting tool that allows you to create powerful and visual performance metrics dashboards. Google Data Studio easily connects to Google Analytics to harness your website data.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to measure your site’s Search traffic and performance. It identifies issues and assists in troubleshooting them. Google Search Console easily connects to Google Analytics to leverage your website data.

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a free tool that allows website developers to quickly implement website tags. This allows Bluetent to implement advanced tracking and perform A/B tests on websites.

Keywords

Keywords are the terms and phrases that users type into search engines like Google and Bing to find what they are looking for. Keyword research and tracking are essential components of optimizing your site to rank well on search engines. For example, a property manager in Destin, Florida may want to create a strategy that focuses on ranking for the following keywords: “destin florida private home rentals”, “destin fl rentals with pool”, “family friendly rentals destin”.

Organic Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Organic traffic is when a person finds your website after typing in a query into a search engine. For example, if someone typed in “Vacation rentals in Florida” on Google and then clicked on one of the results that would be considered Organic Traffic.

Online Travel Agency (OTA)

Online Travel Agencies (OTA) sell vacation rental condos and homes for a variety of property managers across the world. They essential act as the middle man between the property manager and the customer. Examples of Online Travel Agencies include VRBO, Airbnb, Booking.com and more.

Owner Acquisition

An essential part of growing a property management company is bringing more properties under contract to rent. Owner Acquisition is the process of acquiring more owners in your property management portfolio. The marketing and advertising tactics used to attract and retain homeowners in a property manager’s portfolio are called Owner Acquisition Campaigns.

Paid Advertising

Paid Advertising is any kind of advertising you have to pay for. Notable examples include Google AdWords and Bing Ads.

Paid Search Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Paid Search traffic is when a person clicks on your paid advertisement and goes to your website. This can include search and display ads on platforms like Google and Bing.

Paid Social Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Paid Social traffic is when a person clicks on your advertisement on a social site link Facebook or Instagram and goes to your website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a category of paid advertising. There are several models that you can choose from in Paid Advertising. PPC means that you are paying every time someone clicks on your ad - hence “pay-per-click”. Another example of a Paid Advertising model is Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) which means you pay every time someone is served your ad, regardless if they click it or not. Our Paid Advertising Managers at Bluetent are experts in determining which payment models are the most effective for your paid advertising campaigns.

Property Management System (PMS)

Property Management Systems (PMS) are the various software systems property managers use to keep their booking and vacation rental data. Examples of PMS include Streamline, LiveRez, iTrip, VRM, SuperControl, etc. Bluetent often uses the acronym PMS since clients utilize a great variety of systems.

Referral Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Referral traffic is when someone clicks on a link to your site from another website. For example, if your local Chamber of Commerce links to your website and someone clicks on that link, that is referral traffic. Often times referral traffic is free - meaning the website that is linking to your site is not making you pay for the link. Referral traffic can also be paid. For example, a company may approach you and let you know that they will link to all of your properties for a certain fee each month or year.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines like Google and Bing. Specifically, SEO seeks to improve the amount of organic traffic driven to the site. SEO is a long term, ongoing strategy and websites must be revised and improved consistently to follow SEO best practices.

Search Engines

A Search Engine is a software system that allows users to conduct web searches. Examples of notable search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex and DuckDuckGo.

Social Traffic

Customers and potential customers can access your website through a variety of channels. For example, they can click on a paid advertisement or a social post and end up on your website. Social traffic is when a person clicks on a post on Facebook or Instagram and goes to your website.

Schema Markup

Schema Markup is code that can be added to websites to help search engines return more informative results for users. In short, it will help your web page look better in search results. Often, it will help your website take up more real estate within the search results, which can help you stand apart from your competition. In the following example, schema markup was implemented to get this accordion question and answer structure to show up.

Open

Year-over-Year (YoY)

The vacation rental industry is very seasonal. A property manager may see a great majority of transactions in the months leading up to their busy season, just as they might see a lower amount of transactions in the months leading up to their shoulder season or off season. For this reason, we prefer to look at data in a Year-over-Year (YoY) analysis. For example, if we are reporting on data from September 2020, we would want to compare it to the data from September 2019.