Hilton find lost guests with Speed-Trap

Hilton Hotels has deployed Speed-Trap’s customer insight software across its website estate to identify and fix problems which could have led to lost custom. The hospitality chain estimates that one issue identified would have cost it over $3 million per year.

The company tested a new design of its website by dircting random samples of visitors to the new site. This allowed usability and paths to be live tested, tracking visitor interactions in real-time. Speed-Trap identified multiple issues that were addressed before the new design was introduced earlier this year.

“We needed to run session monitoring software to enable us to measure the usage trends and the overall conversion through our booking system. We knew that if the data showed conversion rates on the new site were lower, we could then drill down and analyse Speed-Trap’s data on the individual sessions and investigate why,” says Suniel Curtis, online business analysis manager at Hilton Hotels.

He adds: “One major issue that was revealed was that on both the old and new sites an incorrect error message was frequently displayed during the booking process. Instead of notifying the customer that a certain room rate was unavailable on the day they selected and re-directing them to select another option, a generic fault message was posted which unintentionally caused visitors to leave the site. This error, if it had been left uncorrected, could have led to a potential loss of bookings equating to $3 million per year.”