2009 January :: Travel Manager

January 30, 2009 – 1:42 pm

The last few weeks I’ve been working with TravelManager users on reviewing their websites. We’d looked at how they track their traffic and the benefits of adding the Online Quoting Widget to their website.

During the process I started looking at their PageRank; which is a value between 0 and 10 that Google gives websites based on importance. 10 being the highest, but anything over 4 is good but if your site has 5 or 6 you’re really doing well as some of Google’s on sites like Google.ie only have a PageRank of 7!

Or as Google says on their website:
“PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.”
So why does all this mean to Motor Coach Companies? Simple, the higher your website PageRank the better chance I have of listing near the top of Google.
How can I increase my PageRank? Basically, you need to get links to your website on other websites that are relevant to your industry. So in the case of the Motor Coach Industry links on Tourism Websites, Tour Operator Websites are great. If you do work for Universities or Sports Teams or State Body and Government Agencies getting a link on their website would be fantastic as these typically are regarded as very important by search engines.
So if you do one thing on your website after adding the Online Quotation Widget to your website …. You need to start getting some good links to your website.

Regards,
Eamonn

**All search engines work on a similar basis so it’s universally good to have links to your website. So what are you waiting for get link building today.

January 28, 2009 – 10:26 am

Microsoft has finally shipped the latest version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) – and first impressions are they finally have a decent browser to compete with the likes of Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. IE8 is considerably faster that IE6 & IE7 – so if you are still using these (especially IE6) then I would recommend you update your browser as soon as you have the opportunity to.

One of the main improvements to IE8 is the conformance to web standards – which has been a bug-bear of developers around the world for a very long time. Microsoft has finally caught up with the rest of the market and designed their latest browser to be fully compliant with the latest web standards

TravelManager runs a dream on IE8 – just as it does on Chrome, Safari & Firefox.

A full list of the improvemens can be found on Microsofts homepage.

Dean

January 24, 2009 – 8:40 am

We have rolled out a number of improvements to the platform this morning – as requested by users. They are:-

[1] Ability to change the default terms on quotations

[2] Amendments to the “All Quotes Status” report. We have added the referrer site to quotes so you can see exactly where the quote came in from online

[3] Improved the viewing of emails sent to customers

[4] Improvements to the mileage calculations within North American locations.

[5] Amended the wording and order of certain fields on the North American version of the quotations form.

[6] Improvements to the main dashboard screen from a cosmetic and performance perspective.

[7] Improved navigation of searching for quotes from the quotes listing screen

[8] Improved the performance of 2 reports – brought the run tme down from 8s to less than 1s

As per the previous posting we are also working on improvements to the “Additional Fields” section of the quotation process as well as a number of new reports to help you plan your marketing strategy and gather intelligence on your ROI etc.

We have now clsoed 89 feedback items since December 1st 2008 and have 9 outstanding feedback requests which look as though they will all be completed within the next 2 weeks amongst other items. So keep your feedback coming

Regards

Dean

January 23, 2009 – 4:43 pm

We are working on anumber of improvements to the quotation widget – based on feedback from the community. We are looking to rollout the ability to add your own additional fields at the bottom of each quote form. So you could add in checkboxes for DVD equipment or PA / Microphones for example and the prospective customer can choose from your available options.

When the customer chooses a number of these additional fields then his / her choices show up in the quotation details screen inside TravelManager.

So you will then be able to generate reports such as “How many people request DVD equipment? Or how many require a shuttle service? etc.” Its just one more way of finding our more information about your customers and prospective customers

We are looking to rollout this functionality on Saturday 31st January if testing goes to plan.

Regards

Dean

January 22, 2009 – 7:09 am

We did a quick update this morning to clean up some CSS / HTML designs for the main dashboard screen and implement a performance improvement on one of the reports.

We have also implemented a new piece of functionality called “RSS News” where we will bring in industry news from around the Internet into TravelManager so you can get all you news in one handy place as opposed to having to go to multiple locations to get it. We have implemented the “Bus Rides” main news feed so far and are looking to implement more – so if you have suggestions for websites that you think the industry would like then do please let us know.

Regards

Dean

January 21, 2009 – 8:48 am

then take a look at these facts and figures published this morning on the inauguration of President Obama.

600,000 status updates were posted through CNN.com during the broadcast
Facebook averaged 4,000 status updates per second
8,500 status updates were updated in the first minute of his speech
Millions of people logged onto Facebook during the broadcast to “listen” to the feedback
1.5m status updates on facebook as of this morning

The Internet actually “slowed down” here. My 24MB DSL connection at home was crawling along at one stage by the sheer weight of traffic being sent across the network.

When people find something that they can “engage” with then then join the conversation and those conversations can be very very powerful.

The secret is to identify what your customers want to engage in with you. Why do they buy from you? What keeps them coming back? How do you get them to tell everyone else and join in a conversation about you?

Regards

Dean

January 19, 2009 – 11:02 am

With all those news related websites, Blogs and general content online I asked myself the question. What is being said or written about my Business? Unless I wanted to go searching everyday, which is not the most productive use of my time, how do I answer the question?

Well I started using a great service from Google called “Google Alerts*” and after some tweaking of the search terms (e.g. “yourcompany.com” or “Your Company Name”) I was able to answer that question and more.

Once I started getting this information on a daily basis (you can set it up to be less frequent) – it started giving me a better picture about how our services were perceived online. Which leads me to the next question, so how does this affect the Motor Coach Industry? Your website is important, or it’s becoming more important everyday as your customer base moves online.

But customers are becoming more savvy so their using the Internet not only to find your service but to compare and review you against you competitors and often it’s not just about price! What it comes down to is your reputation and much like you’ve built your reputation by your customer’s recommendations you now need to do the same with your online reputation.

So if your reputation online were important, wouldn’t it be nice to track the positive (for Marketing) and the negative (for resolving potential issues)? Better still if you have an Blog or news section of your website you could add a link to those positive stories?

Remember you don’t have to just track your company news maybe it would be a good idea to find out what’s being said about your local competitor? Or monitoring a section of your core business like School Contracts or Sightseeing Tours would give you some more insight into recent events or potential opportunities.

Regards,

Eamonn

*Google Alerts is a FREE service from Google that lets sends me regular emails that track News, Websites, Blogs, Video and user Groups for anything related to my search term.

January 17, 2009 – 8:33 am

This morning we have rolled out the following improvements based on customer feedback.

[1] Timezones are now local across the platform – so once you have set your timezone, all times displayed are in that timezone and not based on GMT

[2] Improved wording on the quotation widget to explain to customers to enter as much information as possible to ensure a timely and accurate quotation from you.

[3] Ability to send attachments to customers via the inbuilt email facility.

[4] Added the requested date on the “All quotes status” screen for ease of reading

[5] Changed the time of the automated daily summary email from 3am to 8am.

[6] Incorporated a summary of the quotation in the email template which gets sent to the customer.

[7] Included the quotation information including notes added into the PDF & Word documents.

[8] Added customer contact information to the quotes details screen

[9] Added a plain text email to the password reset functionality so the reset link can be read in all email readers.

[10] Implemented 3rd party uptime and performance monitoring across the platform so we can assure the optimium speed and 100% uptime of the solution at all times. We have monitoring in place from London (UK), Dallas & Berkeley (USA), Sydney (Aus), Vasteras (Sweden), Montreal (Canada) & Amsterdam (Holland) and will be publishing the real-time graphs within the next couple of weeks.

Amongst other things, next week we will have some great new functionality which will help bring industry news straight to your TravelManager dashboard, so you will no longer have to visit multiple websites to find out what is happening in the industry – it will all be there inside TravelManager

Regards

Dean

January 15, 2009 – 5:36 pm

The International Motorcoach Group (www.imgcoach.com) and the Motorcoach Council (www.motorcoachcouncil.org) have put together a nice video explaining their services and the benefits of travelling by coach.

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

IMG represent 60 of the very best operators in North America – if you need services in the USA / Canada – then I would thoroughly recommend you talk to these guys.

Regards

Dean

January 10, 2009 – 9:35 am

This morning we rolled out some new functionality / improvements.

They include:

[1] Included company contact details on all quote correspondance from the system

[2] Multiple users in multiple offices to be able to share / distribute quotes

[3] Quotes status report – showing all incoming quotes and their current status (responded, booked, declined etc.)

[4] Users can now have personalised signatures with their own contact details

[5] Ability to have a “canned” message for all quote correspondance. The message can be updated in real-time and templates can be added on a per company basis.

[6] New report showing where quotes are coming from (your website or 3rd party website)

[7] Customer contact information is now displayed at the top of each quote page

[8] Ability to duplicate a quote so you can create multiple bookings from the one query

We will be posting next weeks development schedule each monday morning and posting a post-rollout article each weekend to keep you abreast of the new additions / improvements to the TravelManager platform. So if you are interested in whats new and whats coming up please subscribe to our RSS feed on the right of this screen – or add the Blog widget to your dashboard in TravelManager.

Regards

Dean

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