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Introduction
Cottages.com is the UK’s largest holiday cottage letting agency. By the very nature of its business, all the ‘products’ in its portfolio are unique.
Each cottage is different and that's reflected in the guest's experience. Added to this, the company has two sets of customers: cottage owners, and holidaymakers.
The challenge
Cottages.com wanted potential guests to view cottages with confidence and not feel the need to go elsewhere to find out more. The company wanted to create a space where previous guests could share experiences of the cottage they had stayed in and about the holiday in general. It also wanted to combat the challenge of open forum review sites where anyone can leave good, bad or fake reviews.
So Cottages.com knew it had to take the initiative and offer customers transparent reviews, from genuine guests, collated by an independent third party. As well as making it easier for customers to make informed choices, the company believed independent reviews would improve conversions - achieving another important goal.
Cottages.com wanted guests’ comments to encourage cottage owners to make informed improvements to both property and service, raising standards overall.
But first it had to convince two important groups of people. Internal staff were concerned transparent reviews would lead to an increased call volume they wouldn’t be able to handle. And of course cottage owners were worried about the impact any negative comments could have on their bookings.
The solution
Feefo implemented Ratings and Reviews and Customer Experience Reviews. Feefo Ratings and Reviews involves collection of Reviews of cottages from verified customers on behalf of Cottages.com which Feefo publishes on the Cottage.com website.
It also flagged up comments that needed a response. Cottages were given an overall rating, based on cleanliness, comfort, equipment, location and value for money. The reviews provided excellent feedback for the company and cottage owners, including suggestions that will help them improve guest satisfaction.
“We partnered with Feefo because they stood out from the other companies we looked at. We trusted their customer verification process and liked that their independence was immediately apparent to potential customers through the branded ratings.”
Nick Smith
Marketing Director, Cottages.com
Through Feefo Customer Experience Reviews, Cottages.com now collects and displays reviews that focus on customer satisfaction with its service and booking process. This created trust and confidence among potential customers and encourages them to book online. Feefo integrated Cottages.com Customer Experience Reviews with Google Seller Ratings, which now display as stars in Google paid ads. This helps cottages.com stand out from its competition as a highly rated merchant and leads to increased bookings on its site.
Because of Cottages.com's unique business model, Feefo had to carefully tailor its services to meet specific needs. For instance, the cottages are likely to change fairly frequently as they are updated and as owners respond to comments. That makes old ratings redundant. Feefo created ratings for cottages based on reviews collected in the last 12 months. The content is dynamically refreshed each day to display the most current reviews. Anyone interested in reviews over 12 months old can view them by following a separate link. This gives bookers the most up-to-date information, and they can still access old reviews through the lightbox if they want to. Cottages.com was confident that allowing customers to tell their stories would build trust with its target audience, leading to more bookings. It just needed to convince the cottage owners it was the right move.
Feefo and Cottages.com worked together to make sure everyone involved understood the changes. This included checking the terminology in the customer questionnaires to make sure cottage owners were happy, and piloting the programme in Scotland and Wales. The owners who were part of the pilot were surveyed to gauge their reaction, and based on the result, the programme was rolled out through the UK.
“Reviews help potential customers make informed choice and find the right property for their needs. This has led to an increase in bookings — we’ve seen a 3x increase in conversion rate from review readers.”
Nick Smith
Marketing Director, Cottages.com
The results
The data is telling us that:
- Review readers spent 3.7x longer on site than non-review readers.
- Review readers view 3.4x more pages than non-review readers.
- Publish rate of over 40% for reviews, demonstrating strong engagement from Cottages.com customers.
- 3x increase in conversion rate for review readers.
The results so far have led to:
- Potential customers finding the right match for their needs more easily.
- Visitors spending longer on the site, leading to increased conversions.
- Valuable customer insights for Cottages.com and cottage owners allowing both parties to make improvements the guests want to see.
- Improved click-through rates from Google search because of Seller Ratings.
