Travel Oregon: An Example in Creating Loyal Customers
By lorelle, posted March 16, 2010 at 4:03 am | No Comments ยป
If you want a great example of how to simply and easily connect with your audience, using traditional and social media, check out Travel Oregon, the official travel information site for the Oregon Tourism Commission for the state of Oregon in the United States.
I spotted their Travel Oregon Guide at a friends and decided to get my own copy to learn more about the state I recently moved to. Their site was easy to navigate and it was one click to an easy-to-use page to order free state recreation and travel publications, brochures, and maps. I went down the list, choosing the various items of interest, and was taken to a simple form to fill in my mailing information and email, and within seconds, the following, well-written email arrived in my inbox.
Dear Lorelle,
Thank you for ordering the guides listed below from Travel Oregon! The gang wanted to make your Oregon experience as authentic as possible, so we decided to send your travel guides on a little adventure.
Before landing in your mailbox in a few days, your travel guides will soar alongside a rainbow-colored kite on the Oregon Coast, sit in the third row of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ride a buckin’ bronco at the Pendleton Round-Up (Let’er buck!), and admire the Birds of Prey at the High Desert Museum. After exerting all their energy at these fabulous Oregon locations, your travel guides will shop at a local farmers’ market and cook a gourmet meal with friends in the Willamette Valley, stroll through the Japanese Gardens in Portland, and windsurf through the Gorge.
Your dear travel guides will be so inspired after exploring Oregon’s seven regions that they will love nothing more than to curl up on the couch with you and discuss future travel plans, while sipping a refreshing cup of iced Oregon chai tea.
Welcome to Oregon!
The team at TravelOregon.com
The email included a list of all the brochures and information I’d just ordered in a simple and easy to read format.
Lessons to Be Learned
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Travel Oregon, with regards to design, interaction, and social media.
- I Knew I Was in the Right Place: There’s a feeling of wrong when you walk into what you think is the right place and you know it isn’t. It could be, but all your instincts are screaming at you that it is wrong. You back out. Not so with Travel Oregon. I knew in a second I was in the right place.
- They Know Their Audience: Knowing your audience and clearly identifying their needs is critical to letting people know they are in the right place and that you have the goods and information they need. The pictures of Oregon locales in the image slider at the top, the old Oregon West colors and look, the state map, the topics, all reassure me that I’m not just in the right place but they have the information I want and need.
- The Blog is a Part, Not Apart: Their Travel Oregon Blog is a separate entity, but not separated from the website. It is incorporated into it with the latest posts. A visit to the blog shows that it matches the website’s Theme and look while still giving the blogging feel. All are seamless interconnected.
- One Click Access: While it could be displayed more prominently, I found exactly what I wanted at the bottom under Travel Resources and it was one click to the Oregon Travel Guides that I came looking for. To get the brochures, I went through four pages, one to fill in which information I wanted, the next to add my address information, the third to confirm all of the details, not just my contact information but my “order” with an opportunity to change it, and the confirmation page. Took about 2 minutes from the time I arrived on the page to getting the confirmation email. If my Internet connection was faster, the time would have been shorter.
- No Selling: At no point in the process was I “sold” anything. Did you see a “for more information” or “buy now” in the email? Did you see a closing pitch? No. They know their job is just beginning or is done, but it’s now up to me.
The forms were easy to fill out, with a highlighted point to a USD $5 travel info package I could order. The address form was simple and easy to manoeuver through, with easy tabbing from form box to form box. The confirmation was simple and easy to read, again with no sales pitch. And the confirming email was delightful in writing styles and prose. Again, no sale.
They do promote the Travel Oregon Magazine, a subscription, on the site but at no time did anything pop up or attack me through my screen that insisted I take action. They also made it easy to get information on advertising with them. All simple, easy information without a lot of screaming and shouting. - Created a Loyal Customer FAST: My experience was fast and brief, but it stayed in my memory long after filling in the form and getting the email. I felt well served and actually inspired to dig deeper into the site and my new state of residence. In other words, they’ve now got a loyal customer.
While the purpose of this site is to provide information to the traveler, and support does come from the state and other agencies, you might not think they have much to “sell” and the lessons here don’t apply to your site. They do have something to sell. They are selling you on why you should choose to visit Oregon, and why you should spend your hard earned money and vacation time in the Pacific Northwest and “Oregon wild west.” When the travel industry makes money, they are doing their job and reap the benefits.
Sites like these make it all look so easy. It’s not. Trust me. It takes a lot of work to make the process so seamless and effortless, with the total focus on the user, giving them what they want and need with little effort.
A lot of fuss is made over a site’s sticky factor, bounce rate, and time spent on site, but for me, two minutes and I was gone, a very happy customer, willing to come back time and again for more. Does this change how you think about your web analytics? Get in, get out with the right stuff, come back for more. That’s today’s analytics.
Why did they get me, an old, cynical web expert, to become a loyal supporter and customer? Because they knew who I was before I walked through the door and what I wanted. They knew I didn’t have a lot of time to dig around through too much information. They knew that I still wanted the pleasure of holding a magazine-style publication in my hand and dragging it around the house to my various favorite reading spots where the computer dare not go.
That’s service. And I’ll be back for more.
Great analysis of Travel Oregon’s site and welcome email – so true that it takes a whole lot of work and planning to make a seemless, enjoyable user experience. Kudos to their team.