866.249.6095Will ‘Hosts’ Be Replacing Traditional VRMs in 2023?
Author Paul HanakPosted on Categories Analytics, Industry News, Property Management Software, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental Marketing Category: Analytics
Author Paul HanakPosted on Categories Analytics, Industry News, Property Management Software, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental Marketing 
9 FAQ’s About Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Author Diamond FrandsenPosted on Categories Analytics, Industry News 
The rumors are true Google has set a date to deprecate Universal Analytics – July 1 2023. The marketing
How to Use UTM Links to Enhance Your Marketing
Author Joshua PricePosted on Categories Analytics, Search Engine Optimization 
Have you ever visited a website via a link posted on Facebook or Twitter and seen a giant URL similar to the one below? This is what it looks like when you add UTM codes to your links!
All of the information
GA4 Explained: What It Is, How It’s Different & Everything You Need to Know
Author Mike DoutePosted on Categories Analytics 
If you’re a digital marketer or operate a business online and use Google Analytics, you’ve probably seen or heard some chatter about GA4. It was officially released in October 2020, when it became the new default Analytics property type when setting up new accounts.
Conversions: Think Bigger than Dollars
Author Mike DoutePosted on Categories Analytics, Vacation Rental Marketing 
No matter how you cut it, websites can be a massive, necessary investment for vacation rental companies. As technology has advanced and become a larger part of our everyday lives, people are spending
Content Audit Guide: Increase Ranking & Improve User Experience
Author Jill HighsmithPosted on Categories Analytics, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental Marketing 
A How To Guide on Deleting Content
What is a content audit and how can it help you increase website traffic + conversions. Let’s start with the definition: A Content Audit is a way to get rid of under performing low
The Absolute Best Digital Marketing Memes (and why they’re so funny!)
Author Paul HanakPosted on Categories Analytics, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental Marketing 
You can call us “techy”, or maybe even “nerdy” or “geeky”, but any way you slice it, we have digital marketing inside jokes that really only make sense to us marketers.
What’s Next for GDPR and Your Website?
Author InterCoastal Net Designs StaffPosted on Categories Analytics, Email Marketing, Industry News On May 25th the European Union officially implemented GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation.) The web design industry has been abuzz with this news for quite some time. At ICND we’ve put in the research and developed tactics necessary to assist our customers with this transition.
There are many moving parts to GDPR, but the three main points are listed below:
Users must consent to the processing of their personal data and companies must explain how data is collected and the intention for utilizing data.
Users have the right for their personal data to be deleted/forgotten.
If a website experiences a data breach, it must be reported within 72 hours.
We know GDPR can be confusing, but for our customers primarily operating and marketing within the United States, this is what GDPR means for you:
=&0=& We have created a new privacy policy that can be adopted by our customers. This revised privacy policy was specifically developed in response to GDPR, providing website users with more in-depth information on how their personal data may be collected and used.
Readily Available Contact & Data Controller Information:=&1=&=&2=&
Opt-Choice for Email Marketing: Upon completing a contact form on your website, users should have the ability to opt-in if they wish to receive further emails from your company.
How a New Website Can Help Your Traffic
Author InterCoastal Net Designs StaffPosted on Categories Analytics, Vacation Rental Marketing Industry standards tell businesses that they should redesign their website every 2-3 years, and this is something InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) highly recommends to our customer base. Modern design and programming tactics change so quickly, a website can easily become dated with in a few years. Not only may you be missing out on new technology by keeping the same site for 4 or more years, you might be missing out on traffic as well!
We have done a case study of a vacation rental client of ours. Sample client launched their first website with ICND in early 2010. The website was clean, modern for the time, and we even developed a mobile site where their guests could book online (which was relatively new technology in 2010). In 2013, we decided it was time for an upgrade. While a mobile site is great, a responsive website is even better. Instead of having 2 sites, you now have one which responds to the viewer’s device. It’s easier for updates, and Google also prefers it. Computer screens are now wider than they were in 2010, so we designed the new site to be wider as well. We also assured that there was a prominent quick search box above the top fold. After all, the main goal of a vacation rental website is to get your viewers to search for a vacation rental, and ultimately book.
In the beginning of 2014, we started to see a hit in online traffic. This client had been on a steady marketing plan for years and there had been no major change in marketing strategy. We pushed to get the new website live, hoping that we would see a turn around in traffic and revenue upon launch. The new website went live in May of 2014. After 3 short months, we have seen some great increases! Now they are well above their numbers for 2013!
The image below shows their organic traffic for March 1 2014- August 13 2014 and March 1 2013- August 13 2013. The orange line shows 2013 traffic, the blue one shows 2014 traffic. You will notice that prior to the website launching, they were gaining less traffic this year than they had last. As soon as the website launched, 2014 traffic began to show as more than 2013.
Your website is the face of your company, so it is important to keep it up to date. Not only will it impress your viewers and potential customers, it will also impress the search engines, leading them to view you as the leader in your industry!
Ecommerce Tracking Shows Great Results
Author InterCoastal Net Designs StaffPosted on Categories Analytics, Search Engine Optimization ICND is not only a website development and design firm, we also specialize in different avenues of online marketing. The below case study discusses one of ICND’s clients who increased their marketing efforts 6 months ago. It often takes more than 6 months to see drastic results, but this client chose to work with ICND on SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing. All of our efforts worked together to show fantastic results! This is a vacation rental client, who we have set up on Ecommerce Tracking with Google Analytics. With Ecommerce tracking you can see down to the penny what properties were booked and produced revenue, and what outlet the leads came in from.
| # | Source | Revenue | % of Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | google/organic | $231,439.78 | 40.21% |
| 2 | direct | $154,584.87 | 26.86% |
| 3 | bing/organic | $60,343.33 | 10.48% |
| 4 | google/cpc | $57,470.53 | 9.98% |
| 5 | yahoo/organic | $40,071.67 | 6.96% |
| 6 | facebook.com/referral | $4,930.91 | 0.86% |
| 7 | blu172.mail.live.com / referral | $4,624.80 | 0.80% |
| 8 | aol/organic | $4,486.81 | 0.78% |
If you add together Google, Bing, Yahoo and Aol, you will see $336,341.59 in revenue from ICND Organic SEO Efforts.
They have converted $57,470.53 from their Pay Per Click Campaign
They’ve converted $4,930.91 from their Facebook campaign
They’ve converted $4,624.80 from their email marketing campagin
This is of course not counting phone calls, which is often attributed to marketing efforts as well. And many of those direct leads (source #2) could have been coming from Facebook or other marketing sources. Marketing isn’t about just about converting online, it’s about putting your name in the back of people’s minds so when they’re ready to book, they find YOU!
Unfortunately, this client did not have ecommerce tracking on their site prior to 6 months ago, so we cannot compare this year’s online revenue to last years. However, we can tell that their traffic is up 22.33% from this same time last year (comparing 1/1/13-3/3/13 to 1/1/14-3/3/14). They’ve had over 6,000 more visitors on their site this year than last!
If you’re a current ICND client, talk to your account rep and make sure you are set up on Ecommerce Tracking or Goal Tracking. If you’re not an ICND client, contact us today for a free marketing analysis. This isn’t only for vacation rentals or retail sites. A “goal” can be as simple as someone filling out a contact form. If you don’t sell anything online, we still want to be able to track your leads and ecommerce and goal tracking are the perfect way to track this. Goal and Ecommerce tracking are a large part of ICND SEO efforts. It is important to not only see that you are getting traffic to your site, but also to see that the traffic is quality traffic that will convert to revenue. Numbers don’t lie. With the right amount of time and revenue invested into your marketing plan, we can help you grow too!