Rebecca Rast

LaderaRomantic Paradise

Ladera - A Romantic Paradise Ladera is a romantic, exclusive resort located in beautiful St. Lucia in the Caribbean Sea. The resort offers a number of different floor plans, catered towards their target audience - couples. Each suite contains one bedroom with one bed, either King or Queen sized. The resort offers many unique activities that would most likely be enjoyed by people looking for a romantic getaway.

The Ladera website exists to give potential guests information about what the

resort has to offers from their exotic suites with private personal pools, to their island excursions and five star dining experiences. The website includes pictures and interactive 3D models of suites, along with lists of the activities they have to offer. Most importantly, they make it easy to make a reservation to stay at the resort.

Main Website PagesLadera’s home page shows a slideshow of photos of the amenities, gives a brief description of the resort, shows a promotional video, and provides links to other pages like their Photo Gallery, a list of different rooms, a brochure, and more.

Some of the tabs on their website include “Activities,” “Weddings,” “Dining,” “Special Offers,” and most importantly “Make a Reservation.”

At the top of every page on the website, there is a box that gives viewers the opportunity to “Book Now” based on the date, number of guests, and number of nights that they desire for their visit.

Macro GoalsThe macro goal of Ladera’s website is to result in a reservation of a suite. From Ladera’s home page, there is

a box that gives viewers the chance to fill in their check-in date, number of nights, and number of guests with

the option to “Book Now.” There is another tab that gives the option to “Make A Reservation.”

Macro-Conversion Funnel - Website

After clicking on either “Book Now” or “Make a Reservation,” customers are taken to the following page on which they choose the room and rate that they prefer.

Once they choose the room and rate that they want, they are led to “Step 3” where they verify their reservation information. When they click “Proceed,” they continue to a page on which they fill out their contact and payment information.

Macro-Conversion Funnel - Analytics

Home Page

Select

Reserve

Charge Details

Thank You

Creating a Macro Goal Funnel

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Micro GoalsMicro Goals on Ladera’s website include signing up for their email list, requesting information and filling out personal information through their “Contact Us” page, and downloading the e-brochure or pictures from the photo gallery.

Micro Goal Set-Up

Regional FiltersWhen creating views to restrict what data is shown in analytics reports, it is important to remember the

orders in which filters are applied. In Ladera’s situation, each Regional Sales Manager would need to have

their own view on the account with a different filter on each that limited the information to that from their

region alone. However, before creating each individual view, it is always a good idea to test the filters in the

“test” view of your account.

First apply filters under your test view

Regional Filter Example

Once the filters have been tested, a separate view for each region should be created. The picture above shows the view for the North American Region, in which only the North American filter has been applied. Since the filter type is “include,” only data from North America will be included in this view.

Main Landing PagesThe Landing Page Reports on Google Analytics describes which page on a website viewers start on. For instance, if they did a Google search for “Ladera Resorts,” which link they clicked on to get to the website.

Landing Page ReportThe Landing Pages Report is located under the Site Content tab of Behavior reports. This report tells you how many sessions each landing page has, the bounce rate, the average session duration, and more useful information. Using these reports could tell Ladera more about their target audience - if they got more valuable views from potential honeymooners, wedding parties, or another audience.

Wedding CampaignFor a weddings campaign, the landing page would be the “St. Lucia Weddings” page, with the URL http://www.ladera.com/romantic-getaways. This is the only page with information about weddings, and the first link that comes up for the Google search “Ladera Resort weddings.”

To advertise a wedding campaign, the three most successful channels would be:

- AdWords

- Pinterest- Facebook

Constructing Wedding Campaign URLsTo construct a URL for each of the three

channels, it is important to identify the

unique sources, mediums, and campaigns.

The source for all three channels would

be different: Pinterest, Facebook, and

AdWords. The medium would be

different for all three: “social” for

Facebook and Pinterest since they are

social media sites, and “cpc” for AdWords

since it is a paid advertisement. Lastly,

the campaign could be the same or

different, but for Ladera’s wedding

campaign, it is “wedding” or “destination

wedding” in the case of AdWords.

Wedding Campaign URLsPinterest: https://www.ladera.com/romantic-getaways/?utm_source=pinterest&utm_campaign=wedding&utm_medium=social

Facebook: https://www.ladera.com/romantic-getaways/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=wedding&utm_medium=social

AdWords: https://www.ladera.com/romantic-getaways/?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=wedding&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=destination%20wedding

Insight Provided by URLsGenerating URLs and using campaign tagging can provide insight into conversions, ROI, and future marketing campaign investments. When users click on an ad or link that has been tagged, they will be identified as referrals coming from the website and campaign - in this case Pinterest, Facebook, or Google.

If you don’t tag your campaigns properly it can lead to incorrect data in your reports.

These reports identify where page viewers come from, and where money is wisely

spent. By tagging campaigns, there is more data about which campaigns and channels are most fruitful.

Understanding VisitorsNew vs. Returning Visitors Looking at new and returning users can help identify strength

of your landing pages and the number of visits on each page. This information can also help explain how many times viewers return to a page before making a reservation.

Time on Site Time on site describes how much time a user spent looking at a website before leaving the page. This can provide

information about landing pages and if the information provided is enough to lead to a conversion.

Device Type Device Type reports identify which users were visiting the page on a computer or mobile device. If a user visits from a

mobile device but doesn’t stay on the website for long, it may be because the website is not mobile-friendly.

Bounce Rate Bounce Rate describes how long a viewer is on a website before leaving the page. Again, this indicates if a landing page

is strong enough to hold a viewer's attention and intrigue them into visiting more pages on a website.

ConclusionLadera’s website does a great job of

catering to their target audience -

couples looking for a romantic and

secluded getaway. The interactive

3D floor plans, list and

corresponding photos of island

excursions, price and booking

availabilities, and other elements of

the website provide almost all of the

information that prospective

customers could want and need to

make a decision for their wedding

destination, honeymoon, or vacation

spot.

RecommendationsAfter analyzing the elements of Ladera’s website, it is clear that they recognize their audience and the viewers of their page.

The best way to improve the benefits their website and marketing efforts would be to increase their use of campaigns, and further URL tagging. Looking at landing page reports would be a good place to start; whichever pages had the highest number of sessions, longest average session duration, and lowest bounce rate should be more heavily invested in.

Looking at these reports will help focus marketing efforts on campaigns and channels that have the highest return on investment.