Sunshine.co.uk boosts conversions 50%

Online travel agent sunshine.co.uk is expected to add £14 million in sales this year, thanks to a dedicated focus on improving conversion rates.

A case study has been released by Conversion Rate Experts (CRE), which has been working with sunshine.co.uk for six months, lifting conversion rates by 50% during this time.

In 2009 sunshine.co.uk’s sales were £17 million; in 2010 they are on target to hit £31 million.

CRE said improving the way in which sunshine.co.uk’s pricing was displayed – clarifying exactly what was included in the displayed price – lifted conversion by 14% alone.

“Visitors weren’t sure if the figures were per person, per night, or whether flights and hotels were included,” it said. “Ironically, the prices were so low that they were harming the conversion rate.”

CRE reangled sunshine.co.uk’s communication with its database by incentivising a response and personalizing the communications. Changes to the subject line in the email could alter the response rate significantly, it also found.

It emerges from the study that improving conversion rates involves a number of partnerships. CRE refers to Survey Monkey and KISSInsights as helping with the CRM, while Google Website Optimizer was the basis for its split testing.

Usertesting.com and whatusersdo.com helped with usability analysis. CRE used these tools to look at competitor sites for comparison as well as sunshine.co.uk.

The biggest benefit of higher conversions is a better deal for its affiliates. The case study said that “sunshine.co.uk’s biggest affiliate noticed that the pay-per-click (PPC) traffic it sent to sunshine.co.uk was converting twice as highly as the traffic it sent to competitors—so earnings doubled.”

On a similar note, CRE suggested that sunshine.co.uk can now use PPC profitably and use paid-for traffic to increase market share and revenues.