the first-ever Airline CRO Survey Report<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nA total of 28 airlines from all around the world participated in our survey. We managed to capture the full spectrum of the airline business world, from LCCs to FSCs and from small to large airlines.<\/p>\n
The goal of the survey was to evaluate the maturity of CRO processes and the key challenges airline professionals face in their conversion optimisation efforts.<\/p>\n
In order to do this, we created our Airline Conversion Optimisation Maturity Model, which consists of 7 areas:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 6 general CRO areas (people, skills, activities, test quantity, tools, organisational support); and<\/li>\n
- 1 airline-specific area (internet booking engine – IBE).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Each area was ranked from Level 1 (basic) to Level 5 (most advanced).<\/p>\n
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Even though the Airline Conversion Optimisation Maturity Model was built to measure the CRO maturity of the airlines, it is applicable to all forms of business.<\/em><\/p>\nLearnings \u2013 how airlines compare to other industries<\/h2>\n
When we launched the Airline Conversion Optimisation Survey, we perceived CRO as something special or unique to airlines. However, we discovered that CRO maturity in the airline industry is quite similar to that of other fields.<\/p>\n
Most of the similarities are connected to the fact that CRO is still a young discipline<\/strong>. You see, the 2017 <\/em>State of Conversion Optimisation Report<\/strong> conducted by ConversionXL and Sentient Ascend \u2013 which was our benchmark when searching for similarities between airlines\u2019 CRO and these tactics in other businesses \u2013 stated that:<\/p>\n\u201c58% of [optimisation professionals] have only been in CRO roles for 0-2 years. The industry is still relatively young and gaining momentum.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nOf course, the same goes for the airline industry. And this brings us to the first similarity between the airline and other industries regarding CRO.<\/p>\n
Four key comparisons between airlines and other industries in regard to handling CRO<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Key comparison #1<\/h3>\n
CRO is a fairly young discipline<\/strong>, and not only in the airline world. However, travel leaders jumped on the bandwagon early.<\/p>\nKey comparison #2<\/h3>\n
For most, CRO is not yet a structured process<\/strong>. According to the 2017 <\/em>State of Conversion Optimisation Report, 64% of optimisation professionals still work in a non-structured manner. They don\u2019t plan, fully analyse or document all CRO processes.<\/p>\nOne of the indicators that CRO is not yet perceived as a standard in companies is the fact that 47% of optimisers still work at companies where CRO expenses are not included in the budget. This means that HR departments are not headhunting for CRO specialists, and the activities are not fully premeditated as part of the strategy or P&Ls.<\/p>\n
Key comparison #3<\/h3>\n
As a consequence of this unstructured approach, in the vast majority of cases CRO is still being operated by the person most skilled in digital marketing within the company. Instead of employing CRO specialists, companies rely on digital marketing professionals for CRO knowledge.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIn 64% of airlines, CRO is performed by an online marketing specialist. The same goes for other industries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Key comparison #4<\/h3>\n
In comparison to other industries, the airline industry still falls behind in CRO efforts<\/strong> when it comes to A\/B testing and other CRO experiments. While in other industries, 52% of optimisers experiment on a regular basis (at least 12 tests per year), our study showed that only 32% of airlines do this.<\/p>\nConclusion\u2014How do you become a Leader?<\/h2>\n
So what is it that we can learn from the airline and travel industry leaders when it comes to conversion rate optimisation? To answer this, we have to rephrase the question:<\/p>\n
What we can learn from the CRO leaders?<\/strong><\/p>\nYou see, the airline industry is pretty similar to others when it comes to CRO, because we\u2019re all just at the beginning of this important marketing discipline. But it\u2019s not too early to learn from the best<\/strong>.<\/p>\nBooking.com and Airbnb are leaders when it comes to CRO efforts in the travel industry. A great amount of tests took them far ahead, and we should all derive inspiration from that. However, through our 2017 Airline CRO research, we detected four airlines that can also be considered CRO leaders.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt\u2019s true that the majority of these four airlines are large players, but one of the things that is essential to their success and CRO maturity is that they have adopted a \u2018CRO way-of-thinking\u2019 as part of their culture:<\/p>\n
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The Econsultancy 2017 yearly CRO report reveals the same lesson as Diggintravel\u2019s 2017 Airline CRO Report: The more you experiment, the better your results will be.<\/strong> Airline Leaders perform 5 to 10 tests per month.<\/p>\n