Sunshine.co.uk is a UK-based travel agency that offers cheap vacations. Within six months of working with Conversion Rate Experts, its conversion rate almost doubled.
This was achieved despite the fact that the rest of the UK travel industry was in crisis; the country was in the grips of a recession, airlines were collapsing, and the number of vacations booked was falling at its highest rate ever. In fact, during this period, the travel industry lost over £2.1 billion in profit. So, during this tough time, how did sunshine.co.uk double its revenue?
Conversion rate optimization, of course. (You had guessed that already, hadn’t you?) In this article, we’ll show you how we did it.
If you’d like to hear the sunshine.co.uk team’s thoughts about this project, take a look at our interview with the team.
How we did it
Surveying your customers is the bedrock of a successful campaign
All companies know they should survey their customers, but few do it regularly. And even fewer survey their customers well. With sunshine.co.uk, surveying was the foundation for the massive increases in conversion.
“Surveying our customers with Survey Monkey was mind blowing. Normally, the main customer contact we have is when the customer has an issue with a booking. With the survey, we found that the silent majority loved us.”—Chris Clarkson, Marketing Director of sunshine.co.uk
That’s not all. The survey also helped us understand why customers loved sunshine.co.uk—which we could then emphasize on the website.
Here are our top three tips for surveying your customers:
1. Make your surveys more qualitative—If you stick to multiple-choice questions, it’s easier to process the data for hundreds or thousands of customers. However, it won’t be anywhere near as valuable as if you asked questions with open-text-field responses.
Don’t get us wrong; multiple-choice questions have their uses, but we find that open-text fields are much more useful for improving your conversion rate.
2. Give customers an incentive to fill out the survey—The more people complete your surveys, the more valuable they’ll be. sunshine.co.uk decided to offer everyone who filled out the survey the chance to win the cost of their last vacation—which could be as much as several thousand pounds. This investment paid off quickly when we started to implement and test the ideas generated by the survey’s feedback.
3. The covering email is just as important as the survey and incentive—It’s essential to get the email right, to ensure that as many people as possible fill out the survey. This is what we did to ensure sunshine.co.uk’s email would be read:
- In the subject line, emphasize the benefit to customers. That’s why we used “Get your holiday free” instead of “Can you fill out our survey?”
- Sell the survey as you would your products or services. We emphasized that the survey was easy to fill out (“it only takes about 3 minutes”) and added the incentive (“win back the cost of your last holiday”).
- Emails should be personal. The more personal the email, the more likely people are to respond. That’s why we included the customer’s name in the email and signed it from a person, rather than from an impersonal marketing department. We emphasized this further by including a photo of sunshine.co.uk’s managing director, Chris Brown (and Pluto!).
sunshine.co.uk’s email was carefully written to maximize responses.
In addition to using Survey Monkey, we recommend KISSinsights for surveys. KISSinsights provides an incredibly quick way of adding a short survey (usually just one or two questions) to a particular page. You can create and launch a survey in less than a minute (we timed it ourselves, and it took 55 seconds), which completely changes your approach to surveying.
Usability testing will make you rich
We started doing usability testing quickly and easily with remote testers from usertesting.com and whatusersdo.com. While some testers were able to book a vacation easily—including flights, hotels, stopovers, and parking—others struggled.
“Usability testing was easily the biggest ‘wow’ and ‘facepalm’ moment.” —Chris Clarkson of sunshine.co.uk
Here are our top three tips for usability testing:
- Don’t test just your site; test your competitors’ too—By comparing sunshine.co.uk against the competition, we were quickly able to see what it was doing right—and what it could do better.
- Do it often—We carried out usability tests on every major redesign of the homepage, resort and hotel pages, and the booking process. This way, we could ensure the site was as user-friendly as possible before and after testing.
- Do it now—This is the most important point. A lot of people think usability testing is a good idea but put it off indefinitely. Don’t! You can get started in less than 10 minutes.
Know your analytics
Each type of research tool or technology gives you a slightly different view of your current business. Web analytics software such as Google Analytics or Omniture SiteCatalyst doesn’t give much rich information about what’s going on in your visitors’ heads, but it does reveal a lot of quantitative detail about the flow of users through your website. It’s particularly useful for helping you decide which pages to work on first.
sunshine.co.uk uses Google Analytics for its web analytics. It has also used Crazy Egg, which provides simple visual heatmaps that show where your visitors are clicking on a given page.
Regular split testing is essential
Split testing with Google Website Optimizer became a built-in part of sunshine.co.uk’s development process; nothing was changed on the website without being tested first. That way, we could see exactly which changes were increasing the conversion rate, which had no impact, and even which lowered the conversion rate.
It took just six split tests to almost double sunshine.co.uk’s annual revenue. But we actually did ten split tests in total. The advantage of CRO is that you can’t go backwards. If a test increases the conversion rate, you switch to the new version and increase revenue immediately. And if it doesn’t increase the conversion rate, you just stick with the original.
What we changed
Make it clear why you rock
When we started working with sunshine.co.uk, it wasn’t immediately clear why visitors should use its site rather than one of its competitors’.
To find out, we spoke with two of sunshine.co.uk’s founders, Chris Clarkson and Alan Gilmour. They had the inside knowledge of the travel industry and could tell us how they were different from the competition.
We also studied the data from the customer survey. We wanted to find out what customers liked about sunshine.co.uk and how they’d describe the company to a friend.
This word cloud was produced from the responses to the question “How would you describe sunshine.co.uk to a friend?” We created it with wordle.net.
We took all of this data and distilled it into four main benefits:
- Lowest-price guarantee—sunshine.co.uk has incredibly low prices for vacations, so we backed this up with this compelling guarantee: If you can find a cheaper vacation, we’ll refund the difference—and give you a fiver on top.
- Peace of mind—Prospects were understandably anxious about the turmoil in the travel industry. sunshine.co.uk recognized this objection and emphasized a guarantee that allayed the prospects’ concerns: If a supplier goes out of business, you can claim your money back from us.
- ABTA-bonded—sunshine.co.uk is bonded by ABTA, the UK travel trade association. This reassures visitors even more that their booking and vacation are secure.
- No hidden charges—When booking a vacation, most customers are used to having baggage fees, taxes, and fuel surcharges added on. Not with sunshine.co.uk, which includes all of these from the start. It even includes supplier failure cover for free (most competitors charge extra for this).
sunshine.co.uk made it absolutely clear why it was different from the competition.
These were sunshine.co.uk’s main benefits; they weren’t based just on vague opinion but were verified by customer research. By clearly communicating these benefits, we increased the conversion rate.
Uncover—and overcome—common objections and misunderstandings
Improving conversion isn’t just about expressing benefits; it’s about overcoming all the major objections.
Here’s one objection we identified: sunshine.co.uk’s prices are so low, they’re often unbelievable. (At the time of this writing, you can get a trip to the Algarve, including flights and accommodation, for just £91 per person for a whole week!)
In our usability tests, we discovered that visitors were often confused about the prices. Prospects weren’t sure if the prices were per person, if they were per night, or if flights and hotels were included. Ironically, the prices were so low that the company was harming its own conversion rate.
By clarifying the pricing, and what it included, we increased the conversion rate by 19%, adding an amazing £4 million to its annual revenue.
Clarifying the prices increased sunshine.co.uk’s conversion rate by 19%.
Turn negatives into positives
Visitors and usability testers often commented that no phone number was displayed on the site. This is deliberate—sunshine.co.uk keeps its costs down by accepting bookings online only.
But it can look odd if there isn’t a phone number. As one usability tester commented, “You make the website really friendly, but you also make it hard for people to call you.”
So instead of brushing over the fact that there was no phone number, we promoted the fact that it didn’t have one.
sunshine.co.uk’s missing phone number was turned into a benefit.
At the top right of every page—where you’d normally expect to see the phone number—it now says, “Where’s our phone number?” Clicking on the text opens a pop-up that contains the following text:
“We don’t have expensive call centres, so we can pass on these savings to you—making our holidays incredibly good value!”
The negative was turned into a positive—and visitors to sunshine.co.uk regularly comment on this feature now.
What all this meant
Here’s a short video interview, in which Chris Clarkson from sunshine.co.uk discusses his experience of working with us:
“It's the best money we've ever spent.”—Chris Clarkson, Marketing Director of sunshine.co.uk, when talking about this project. Chris also commented, “Within 6 to 8 weeks, Conversion Rate Experts had paid for itself and more.”
Annual revenue increased to £31 million
In 2009, sunshine.co.uk’s sales were £17 million; in 2010, sales were on target to hit £31 million. That’s a huge £14 million a year extra, as a direct result of its work on conversion rate optimization.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because the conversion rate almost doubled, it also meant that…
Travel affiliates could double their commission by working with sunshine.co.uk
sunshine.co.uk already had a successful affiliate program. And when its conversion rate increased, it wasn’t long before affiliates started to notice, making the program even more successful.
sunshine.co.uk’s biggest affiliate noticed that the pay-per-click (PPC) traffic he sent to sunshine.co.uk was converting twice as highly as the traffic he sent to competitors, so his earnings doubled.
We expect that sunshine.co.uk’s revenue will increase even further, as more affiliates discover the agency’s super-high conversion rate.
PPC offered huge potential for growth
PPC had previously been too expensive for sunshine.co.uk to consider. But with the higher conversion rate, huge volumes of traffic were suddenly available to the company.
As a result of working with Conversion Rate Experts, sunshine.co.uk could afford to increase its bids on PPC profitably—knowing that its higher conversion rate would mean it would still make a strong profit.
As a result, PPC is becoming one of sunshine.co.uk’s biggest growth areas. It’s likely to be a huge source of traffic, which will allow the company to increase its market share rapidly.
What next?
It doesn’t stop here. sunshine.co.uk and Conversion Rate Experts are now focusing on the next phase of development: aggressively developing and testing the website, together with email marketing and advertising.
Thanks to sunshine.co.uk
We’d like to thank Chris, Alan, and the rest of sunshine.co.uk for their hard work during this project—and for allowing us to share this case study with you. We’d also like to thank Michelle from Caboodle Design. Without all of their help, none of the successes above would have been possible.
This article is subject to our Testimonial Protocol, which is described here.
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Excellent case study. I particularly like the way you turned a (kind of strange) negative into a positive. It shows this business is not just about the numbers, like most people seem to believe. It’s about creativity whilst optimizing your pages.
Thanks for the article. Used to work for one travel agency in Croatia. If only this case study came earlier
Very nice. In the highly competitive travel industry doubling a conversion rate is like a miracle. Good job and thanks for publishing CS.
I really like the way you explain both the techniques you used to work out what the issues were and the actual changes you made. How to get the insights and examples of actions to take.
I’m also pleased that you placed such emphasis on the survey and the user testing video. Just listening and paying attention is a very quick way of getting insight. You don’t have to wait for clicks and data to build up: the story starts to build up straight away.
Great stuff.
Good tips in the article and good pdf for your subscribers – thanks for that.
Sunshine did the right thing in investing into their web business compared to others who only started saving money because the economy was down.
Keep the newsletters coming, the information provided is extremely useful for small business owners like myself and I very much appreciate this being given for free.
There are some powerful tips here. Just like you mentioned, we need to go out and implement these. I really loved the “Where’s our phone number?” tip – nice way to handle this major objection.
Still working the magic guys, great post and even better results!
Excellent case for conversion rate optimization.
It’s funny you should mention affiliates too. I blogged about this just yesterday, encouraging more merchants to look seriously into CRO, as its results make everyone more successful (not only the merchant through their own marketing, but also their affiliates, who can then enjoy higher EPC and, consequently, earnings).
Finally, congratulations are certainly in order for achieving such impressive results with/for sunshine.co.uk. Well done for sure!
I agree, an excellent case study.
As an in-house marketer who, like many, would love to see the results achieved above, there is additional detail I’d like to see added to case studies such as this.
What I’d like to know is how this optimisation campaign effected sunshine.co.uk’s internal technical resources. Phrases such as “We carried out usability tests on every major redesign of the homepage, resort and hotel pages, and the booking process” sound great from a marketers point of view, but I wonder what the CTO thought about this added workload for his team. Was additional ‘tech’ resource budgeted into the proposal alongside the experts time and the tools that were used?
I’d love to see some quotes from their CTO as to what actually went into rolling out this campaign, and whether he had to ‘staff up’ to handle these changes. I’ve worked with a major conversion optimisation agency in the past, and while there wasn’t a great deal of internal resource needed to test pages, there was to be able to consistently change your site based on what you were learning as you progressed.
Apart from this – well done on a great campaign!
Hi Brian,
Re: “What I’d like to know is how this optimisation campaign effected sunshine.co.uk’s internal technical resources.”
Check out this Q&A with Chris Clarkson, Marketing Director, and Alan Gilmour, Technical Director, from sunshine.co.uk.
That’s an impressive increase in revenues and results – and many of these steps are eminently adaptable to other businesses.
I like the approach to the negatives on ‘phone’. Usability testing should always be part of landing page optimization.
Open text questions would probably tell a lot but at the same time, it could be tedious. Anyway, what was their incentive for their customers to take the survey?
As I previously stated in the feedback-pop up, reading your case studies is truly inspiring!
Thank you for sharing the knowledge, and keep up the fantastic work!
Terrific post. We just started using Optimizer and are hooked on A/B testing. People spend so much time on SEO and so little converting the traffic they have.
Excellent case study on conversion optimisation. I like how you get into the details with screenshots and how you detail every step of the strategy.
As an in-house marketer for a travel company who is using survey monkey and 4Q surveys right now to make changes. I found this to be very motivating.
We just doubled our bookings & conversion rate last week by making a change to how our sale inventory was displayed that people asked for in surveys so I know it works. It’s amazing how powerful and cheap survey tools are (4Q is free)!
And I TOTALLY agree with the part on open-ended comments being the most valuable – it’s so true, you get a finger on the pulse of your customers
Wow! That is awesome.
My favorite takeaway was this, “Don’t just test your site—test your competitors’ too.” That makes a whole lot of sense.
I also love how you addressed the phone number issue. Excellent. Thanks for sharing!
I love learning new things! – turning a negative into a positive is fabulous – and finding out about the software you use to accomplish this is another bonus! An impressive result for this client.
Thank you for providing such a detailed case study (and the pdf). Three points in particular stood out for me – usability testing competitors, distilling down to 4 assurances and dealing with the no number issue – very inspiring.
What’s really interesting reading the case studies is the common sense approach you take, but most companies simply don’t have the time, cash or resources to action all the techniques required until they see them in action and realise the benefit from optimization.
It would be interesting to know if sunshine’s competitors are now using these techniques and have contacted you for help!
Another great case study guys. I only wish you posted more of these more often.
Very nice case study and the free book. Didn’t think of conversion rate optimization will make affiliate program more profitable, that’s great! You didn’t mention multivariate test in the case, you missed it or you didn’t do it?
Awesome case study. I can’t wait to get started applying some of your techniques. Thanks again for sharing.
Hi, I’m the Technical Director at sunshine.co.uk
@ Brian
The development work related to CRO did indeed create a lot of extra workload, but it came in little spikes. A certain amount of time is taken setting up a test but once it’s going it runs happily by itself. We quickly got used to the “Rush, Rush, Wait..” nature of testing.
Re-designs also took extra time, but we just rolled this under the normal maintenance of the site anyway, as long as it wasn’t conflicting with any urgent/critical work. CRE were also flexible enough to create smaller tests when it was clear that the workload was increasing just to keep things moving.
We’ve now become accustomed to building in split and user testing to any developments made, it’s surprisingly easy to pick up those disciplines as part of our routine.
Great case study guys. Keeps marketers like me up to speed! Good work.
Interesting case study – very relevant to me at the moment so thank you!
Thanks for sharing this really informative case study! Got few ideas for our new project FunnyJapanesePranks.com
One interesting point, by the way, with your new strategy entering PPC game how Sunshine’s affiliates will feel their self. IMHO with your methods their business comes to the END! I don’t think UK PPC market too broad for 2 competing companies. What do you think?
Great case study, full of excellent insights. Thanks for publishing your results
Excellent case study guys – I love how open and honest you are about your CRO process, especially how you’re using the same tools that are available to every other internet marketer.
Funny but I have found myself back at this website several times now. Excellent article. I think we can all learn something from this even if we are not in the Travel vertical.
You guys are simply AMAZING. I never miss any of your posts, every single time a new post comes out, I get inspired.
Thanks for sharing everything!
Amazing info, as usual. Especially loved how you integrated analytics (quantitative) with surveys (qualitative).
Does primary purpose of initial visit matter when recruiting people to conduct surveys? For example, should I recruit people who came to my website to shop or check the prices, but not people who just came to browse my store? Or should I recruit everybody who fits the types of shoppers for surveys?
amazing! Great job and fantastic case study, thanks a lot
Man! I love reading case studies like this. It truly gets me pumped up about all the possibilities from surveying and testing. Great job guys.
Great study, thanks! I have one question. What was the websites traffic? (if it is possible to publish it…approximately) The impact of optimization is huge! Nice!
Hi JT… good question… unfortunately we don’t have permission to disclose this information, sorry.
Love the case study – thanks for sharing! Love Chris’ South African rugby jersey too
priceless 
Very nice work always fun to read your case studies.
Really useful information in this case study. It is a great example of how getting emails just right leads to better responses and conversions from your users.
Hi there,
Can I suggest a quick conversion test for your Florida Park Tickets site?
Swap the background to a plain light blue gradient (sky blue to white for example)
The current background image just pulls the attention away from the content area of the page
Or if you want to keep the image try testing it with reduced opacity so it almost looks transparent.
I’d also try a more benefit telling headline such as “How to save a bundle on your Florida Park Tickets” or what ever your USP is “Buy all your Florida Park Tickets together and save time and money” for example
Regards
Steve
Really great case study – very clever examples – and a phenomenal result!
Another great post. Thanks for all the tips guys. Adding more ammunition to our arsenal!
I have used UserTesting.com in the past with varied results. Are there any similar services you would recommend since you published this article?
Hi Gary. http://www.feedbackarmy.com/ and http://whatusersdo.com/ are similar types of service to http://www.usertesting.com, so you may wish to give them a try.