Millennium & Copthorne wins Ad-Tech SEO Awards

It's official as of last week's Ad-Tech Conference in San Francisco.

EmarketingEye's SEO campaign for Millennium & Copthorne Hotels has won the 2008 Limelight Award for "Best Search Engine Optimization Strategy/Campaign". There is a cool full-flash, SEO-unfriendly, and long-download-time-from-asia site here.

The "trophy" award looks like THIS!

This award is dedicated to all those people who said:

"What!@!# You are giving you SEO work to a small start-up instead of a big agency like us?"

"What!!@# You are doing SEO with a company in SRI LANKA!?!? Is it safe there?"

People... This is the information age. As long as you have decent internet access (which Sri Lanka has), you can participate in the Internet economy. As long as you have a decent education (which Sri Lanka provides), then you can participate in the knowledge-based workforce. As long as you are hardworking (which Sri Lankans are), you can succeed. Virtusa did it. MAS Holdings did it. So can EmarketingEye.

"The World is Flat". Peace, out.

Millennium Hotel’s eCommerce Strategic Action Plan for 2007

It's 29th November 2007, and I am on my holiday in beautiful Phuket, Thailand. This is a very nice downtime and gives me a bit of time to reflect on the past year thus far. I looked back at the Strategic Action Plan for Millennium Hotels’ eCommerce that I put together last December-January, which is as follows:

There were 4 main areas that I wanted to focus on this year based on where we were as we entered into 2007: Search Engine Marketing, Reporting & Analytics, Website Re-engineering & Development and Email Marketing.

1) Search Engine Marketing:

PPC Goals & Plans –
- Increase average worldwide Return-on-adspend to 15-to-1
- Increase generic, non-branded keyword spread
- Engage SEM Specialist to manage my PPC campaign

SEO Goals & Plans –
- Review existing search engine optimization that was being carried out by Profero under the existing contract
- Plan for SEO for the new website due out later in the year
- Plan and implement other strategic SEO projects outside of the current site
- Change SEO agencies or augment the work by existing agency with other agencies


2) Reporting & Analytics

M & C implemented Omniture into our websites in early 2006 before I joined. We were getting basic web analytics like pageviews, visits, and referrer domains as well as revenue and conversion. However, the eCommerce data did not tie up directly with our Synxis data, which was supposed to be the source of the eCommerce data. Anyhow, the plan for 2007 was to clean up the analytics and set up the following reports:

- Top Level Reporting for global and corporate users like myself. The data set is more general and aggregated up so that users get the “bigger picture” to make business decisions at that level.

- Regional Level Reporting for our regions: EMEA, US, Asia, and New Zealand. The data set would aggregated up to each regions’ level so that they can view how the region is doing, but also allow them to see top level reports for each hotel to see how they perform. These reports have not yet been developed so we may need a lot of work to implement the taggings needs. The plan is to develop the initial reports by mid 2007 and take it from there.

- Hotel Level Reporting for each of the hotels so that they can see how they perform online and how their individual websites perform as well. Again, these reports were not yet set up so the tagging needed to be looked at and the first reports to be set up. The individual reports will then needed to be set up by the regions themselves.


3) Email Marketing

Our email marketing was very disparate and is managed independently by the regions and also by the hotels themselves. To cut cost, get brand consistency, instill best practices and seriously manage our CRM, we should get everyone on the same platform. Since everyone owned their own list and wanted to protect it, it does not seem practical to ask them to just simply migrate over. The plan is to develop a best practices platform for one region and then show the other regions and the hotels the benefits of the platform – one which would still allow them to control their lists.


4) Website Re-Engineering & Development

The existing website was put together in late 2005 on a limited budget and was using Lotus Domino as a webserver. It has a content management system, but this was custom built and not very flexible or user-friendly. There was already a plan to upgrade the website to IBM WebSphere running on DB2. So we needed to relook at the whole implementation from tagging to site structure to search engine friendliness and even to a new content management system that could be scalable to future development plans.

So the plan was to redevelop the new site under a new system. At the same time, update the design and build country focused sites for our major markets - .com for the US, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .com.sg for Singapore and co.nz for New Zealand. Future plans included meetings sites for the hotels with major conferencing facilities, destination guides for each hotel, and niche sites like weddings to target those markets as well as non-English versions of hotel sites to target source markets of each hotel.

This undertaking would be the largest and most ambitious activity of the 4 listed here encompassing Search Engine Optimization and Reporting & Analytics as well as Design, Development, and Technical Systems.


*****************

Here is a quick summary and rationality of the above 4 areas of focus:



...... Well, that’s it for now. Back to my holiday. (close the laptop and refocus my eyes on the palm trees, beach and sailboats!)

“Sawasdee Kap” from Joe @ By The Sea Residences, Cape Panwa, Phuket, Thailand.

New Website: Design & US Home Page

On 15th August 2007, Millennium & Copthorne (M & C) re-launched its web presence for its group websites and for each of the hotels. Www.millenniumhotels.com largely focuses on the hotels in the United States, while www.millenniumhotels.co.uk, www.millenniumhotels.com.sg, and www.millenniumhotels.co.nz will be dedicated to the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand, respectively. This Website Redevelopment & Re-engineering Project has taken 6 months since the request for proposal (RFP) was released to potential vendors in February of this year.

The design challenge given for BLUE Singapore (the interactive agency) was to come up with a something that will be fresh and can also be used across the three M & C brands. The final concept was to provide a basic structure for navigation and brand colours while incorporating large background images for the sites.

For the countries, images that evoked an "emotive iconic” feel were selected with regional marketing teams; the aim was to find images that makes a visitor connect with that destination emotionally rather than the typical skyline image. Each country would have 3 images that would rotate based on your visit. The decision was made to have a wider screen resolution than the original; at 1024 X 768, this would be optimal for over 92% of M & C website visitors in 2007. See the various version of the country pages below:


WWW.MILLENNIUMHOTELS.COM Home Pages Image for the United States

Yellow Taxi on Broadway. Gee, where is that? Do you need an immigrant taxi driver sticking his head out and waving atcha?

Gotta think about this one. Where is Hol*ly*wood |ˈhälēˌwoŏd|?
Click on the link. I dare ya.

Alright, no more spoon feedin'. That Big Black Building is a hint, but so is the street sign. If you see it on the site, it actually says "MICHIGAN AV". I don't wanna hear it, I didn't choose this image.

See Home Page Images for the United Kingdom

See Home Page Images for Singapore

See Home Page Images for New Zealand

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New Website: UK Home Page

WWW.MILLENNIUMHOTELS.CO.UK Home Page Images for the United Kingdom

Stoic Beefeaters in front of a castle. Must be Czechoslovakia (NOT!)... umm.. ok, is it Scotland? (DOH! Do ya see any skirts? Getting warmer though. Just click on the link....)

A castle on a lake. It COULD be Deustchland, but we are going for the King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake thing. ...bokay?

Big Hint "TATE BRITAIN" sign. Bigger hint is that clock tower in the back. And just to throw you off a little bit, we give you clear blue skies. HAHAHAHAH!

New Website: New Zealand Home Page

WWW.MILLENNIUMHOTELS.CO.NZ Home Page Images for New Zealand

New Zealand = Adventure (duh!?!?)
(Yeah, I know it's a link to AJ Hackett's site and not about whitewater rafting. I'll talk to AJ next time I see him as ask about some bungy pix from KAWARAU BRIDGE.)

New Zealand = Rubgy (at least one very popular rugby team.. ahem.. The All Saints or something like that.)

100% PureNZ.
You haven't seen the ads? Please go back under your rock.

Shockwave Flash vs. Javascript

Always a fun debate to have... (for us geeks that is).

On wiwih.com, a guy from TVTrip.com - a meta search engine out of the EU - was saying that "I just dont get it: most of 'cool flash effects' can be made with Javacript."

So here's my reply:
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New Javascript apps needs to be tested thoroughly to make sure they are compatible with all browsers and don't break up the page. Flash is - for lack of a better phrase - "self contained".

Functionally, Flash can do as much as Javascript if you know how to use ActionScript well (which is kinda like Javascript in any case).

Javascript is AJAX; the buzz word for the last 2 years. I see that your site - TVtrip - uses that extensively, as a Web 2.0 should. :-) AJAX is a better way to handle large amount of data streaming in. I am planning to use that for our booking engine interface next year.

Flash is easier to develop. Yep, any web agency can whip up a flash anime in a ... flash (hehehe). But most of them have very limited Javascript expertise beyond select boxes.

I noted that you use Flash for your destination map on your homepage as well, so functional flash has its place. But obviously once you hit the Google Maps, it's Javascript and AJAX or the highway.
=====

For the new Millennium & Copthorne site, we use Flash for the promotion banners on the main country homepages. However, if you look at the bottom, there are 4 slider bars. When you click on them, they slide up and displays info relevant to that slider tab. This is done using javascript layers. Each layer is like a new page and can have any components including Flash and video.

.... and probably NOT very SEO friendly either. You just can't have your cake and eat it too.

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Shockwave Flash & Monitor Resolutions for New Website

From a discussion on wiwih.com:

For what it's worth, here are some stats for Flash Plugin penetration and also monitor resolution for visitors to millenniumhotels.com in the first 7 months of 2007.

Shockwave Flash Penetration (98.5% for our visitors!)

(Sorry, but I don't yet have the breakdown of Flash by versions.)

Screen Resolution (over 85% of our visitors have resolutions wider than 800 pixels)


The above are why our newly launched site caters for 1024 width and uses more Flash. We also use javascript to supplement the flash animation, but that's mostly only on the homepage. Lots more SEO work to follow...


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Finally... creating this blog

Well, I have been telling myself to do this for over a year now, but have been too busy.

Finally, now that my new websites for Millennium & Copthorne Hotels is launched, I have a bit more time. See the new sites:
The United States site @ www.millenniumhotels.com
The United Kingdom site @ www.millenniumhotels.co.uk
The New Zealand site @ www.millenniumhotels.co.nz
The Singapore site @ www.millenniumhotels.com.sg

Yes a bit of promotion above. But more on the sites in another post.

At this point, I want to list what is this blog will try to cover:

- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay Per Click Search Engine campaigns
- Web Analytics for Hospitality
- Email Marketing
- eCommerce Technology & Platforms
- eCommerce Strategy
- CRS, PMS, and Distribution Systems
- Online Travel Agents (OTAs) & Third Party Intermediaries (TPIs)
- Meta Search Engines
- Web 2.0 (??)
- .......

I will try to steer my postings on the above.... and may be others as they pop up.