State Tourism Website Traffic Analysis | Q3 2019
Methodology
The third of our quarterly state tourism website traffic analysis for the 50 official state tourism offices was published today. The analysis was conducted by the TwoSix Digital team to benchmark and rank traffic to each tourism organization’s website. The analysis graded each state by total traffic, average monthly visits, the share of mobile vs. desktop and engagement factors like pages per visit, average visit duration and bounce rate. We continued this month to track inbound and outbound links, which gives us some perspective on where the visitors are coming from and where they are going after interacting with state tourism websites.
Michigan Takes the Lead
The website volume traffic leader has changed for the third consecutive quarter. The third quarter was led by Michigan, with an average monthly total of 849,506, followed by Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, and California. In this quarter only 28% of the state tourism websites showed an increase in traffic over Q2. This indicates that a majority of the states ramp up their promotion and receive the most traffic during the traditional summer travel planning season. The average number of visits to all state tourism website was 716,294.
Mobile Traffic
Mobile traffic decreased by 11% from Q2 to 64%. There is no clear indication of why it has dipped, but the overall average for the last three quarters is 72%, which is in line with other industry data. We can confidently say that most sites are well over 70% in terms of mobile usage. And, it is a clear reminder to all tourism organizations that mobile optimization is still one of the most important parts of any online promotional campaign.
Pages Per Session
The state of Tennessee leads in pages consumed per session with just over 4, followed by Oklahoma, Delaware, Ohio, and Virginia – which are all hovering around the 3.5 pages per session range. Oklahoma leads the pack with an average time on site of 3:01 followed by West Virginia, Delaware, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Website Engagement
In terms of overall engagement, Delaware is at the top of the list followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Tennessee. This ranking was calculated by using a weighted scale based on the number of page visits, time on site and bounce rate. We then calculated the overall engagement rate on a scale from 1-10 and ranked the states from 1 to 50.
Incoming and Outgoing Sites
We continued to track the top incoming and outgoing websites in Q3. The leader for the top incoming site was Google at 70%, down slightly from 74% in Q2. This again solidifies much of the published data that shows a majority of travel planning begins with a search. The second most common referred traffic source for state tourism offices was TripAdvisor at a distant 12%.
The top two outgoing sites were Facebook and the National Park Service. Facebook was responsible for 40% of the downstream traffic – an increase of 8% over Q2 – and the National Park Service at 20%.
Alaska and California lead the way with eight of their outgoing traffic links reaching travel, tourism and hospitality sites while Florida, Georgia, Hawaii and Michigan following with seven each.
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State Tourism Website Traffic Analysis Infographic | Q3 2019
State Tourism Website Traffic Analysis | Q2 2019
The second of our quarterly state tourism website traffic analysis for the 50 official state tourism offices was published today. The analysis was conducted by the TwoSix Digital team to benchmark and rank traffic to each tourism organization’s website. The analysis graded each state by total traffic, average monthly visits, share of mobile vs. desktop and engagement factors like pages per visit, average visit duration and bounce rate. This month we also tracked inbound and outbound links, which gives us some perspective where the visitors are coming from and where they are going after interacting with state tourism websites.
The indicator that the tourism promotion season is in high gear was very clear with 72% of the states increasing their overall traffic in Q2 over Q1. Oklahoma took over the number spot with 2.8 million total website visits. The top five stayed consistent, with one change – Oklahoma replaced Hawaii among the leaders. Florida held the second spot for the second consecutive quarter, followed by California, Michigan and Colorado.
The average number of visits to all state tourism website was 834,906 in the Q2, a 7% increase over Q1. Mobile traffic stayed consistent at 75%, just two percentage points down from 77% in Q1. The state of Alaska moved up to the number one spot in website engagement, from number three in Q1. They also lead all fifty state tourism offices in pages per visit at 3.17 and time on-site with a duration of 2:49.
The other states in the top five of overall website engagement were Delaware at number two, followed by Vermont, West Virginia and Connecticut rounded out the fifth spot. This ranking was calculated by using a weighted scale based on the number of page visits, time on site and bounce rate. We then calculated the overall engagement rate on a scale from 1-10 and ranked the states from 1 to 50.
One addition to the Q2 rankings includes the top incoming and outgoing websites, which gives us some perspective on the overall traveler’s content interests and website usage. The top incoming site was Google. Of the 50 states, 74% of them had incoming traffic from Google. It also looks like many state tourism offices are conducting connected TV promotions, as Hulu was second in referral traffic – sending 22% of the total inbound traffic to state tourism sites. TripAdvisor rounded out the top three with an 8% share of incoming clicks.
The top outgoing sites were much more balanced with Facebook leading the downstream traffic at 32% followed by the National Park Service at 30%. Google also acquired 26% of the outgoing traffic – which tells us more than a quarter of the visitors to state tourism websites did not find what they were looking for or needed more specific information following their initial query. TripAdvisor closed out the top four with an 8% share of outgoing traffic.
One very interesting note, Alaska was the only state with all of their top 10 outgoing traffic links reaching local tour groups and tourism industry partner websites. A great achievement for the marketers of the 49thstate!
All of the data was gathered via SimilarWeb, a third-party traffic and website analysis application. SimilarWeb’s innovative marketing intelligence allows users to gain insight into any website’s statistics through a global panel of consumers that work across a range of devices and websites.
We would like to emphasize that we do realize these numbers will not be “apples to apples” in terms of overall website visits recorded through Google Analytics or other tracking software installed on an individual website. But, by collectively recording the aggregate data for all 50 states from an identical source utilizing the same methodologies, we will be able to draw a very accurate analysis of the traffic positioning.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 1, 2015
Here is the Digital Engagement Ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices for Q1, April of 2015.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 1, 2015 here.
We would like to congratulate the states that have made the top ten:
1) Oregon; 2) Michigan; 3) Colorado; 4) Virginia; 5) Massachusetts; 6) Hawaii; 7) Florida; 8) Louisiana; 9) Georgia and 10) California.
The top 10 stayed relatively consistent from last quarter with some notable shakeups. Oregon overtook Michigan at number 1, causing Michigan to drop to 2. Colorado shot up from number 12 to the number 3 spot, with Virginia dropping to number 4. Massachusetts also rose one place to the number 4 spot.
As you can see in the final scoring, Oregon and Michigan are quite close with scores of 90.6 and 88.4 respectively.
The report features an overall digital and social media ranking of each state from one through fifty. It is the third consecutive quarter the report has been published and the comparison results from last quarter are located on page three.
We continue to place significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within this report, with both Overall Website Traffic Rankings and Facebook Engagement coming in as the most weighted. This report covers the first quarter of 2015. We will continue to publish the Digital Engagement Rankings on a quarterly basis, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
We are also looking into additional resources to help us attain engagement numbers that will span a longer period of time.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 4, 2104
Here is the Digital Engagement Ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices for Q4, December of 2014.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, Q4, December 2014 right here.
We would like to congratulate the states that have made the top ten:
1) Michigan; 2) Virginia; 3) Oregon; 4) Massachusetts; 5) Hawaii; 6) North Carolina; 7) Florida; 8) Louisiana; 9) Georgia and 10) California.
As you can see, the top 10 stayed pretty consistent from last quarter with only one change. California moved into the number 10 spot and Tennessee dropping to 11. Based on performance and consistency, the top 10 is almost interchangeable. And, as you can see in the final scoring, Michigan, Virginia and Oregon are all very close with scores of 82.5, 82.2, and 82.1 respectively.
Other movers of note in this quarter include Colorado, up eight spots to 20; New Hampshire up ten spots to 15; Montana up ten spots to 16; Minnesota up eight spots to 19; New York up nice spots to 27 and Indiana up 11 spots to 29.
The report features an overall digital and social media ranking of each state from one through fifty.It is the second consecutive quarter the report has been published and the comparison results from last quarter are located on page three.
As we developed our new ranking criteria, we continue to place significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process. In the Q4 report, we made some additional adjustments to add more emphasis on Facebook engagement – since it is an area of interest and concern with the new algorithm changes.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within this report. This report covers the fourth quarter of 2014. We intend to continue to publish the Digital Engagement Rankings on a quarterly basis in the future, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
We are also looking into additional resources to help us attain engagement numbers that will span a longer period of time.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.
Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, QTR 3, 2104
Today, we officially publish the first-ever Digital Engagement Ranking, featuring a digital and social media ranking of the 50 United States Tourism Offices.
Over the past six months, we have had several requests from state tourism offices to re-develop the benchmark process that I originally published in July of 2009. But, like everything digital, there is an evolution process. We felt that the use of digital and social media marketing had evolved over the past few years and the measurement had to extend beyond social media.
In our conversations with a number of destination marketing organizations prior to working on this rankings report, we learned that concerns have grown beyond social media. The common thread in many of our conversations was in regard to the development of website content and how that content can be integrated into multiple social media channels to inspire prospective travel consumers to take action.
One reoccurring theme throughout our discussions was a re-emergence of the organization’s website. Over the past few years, websites took a backseat to social media – as the new, shiny applications, got a lot more of the attention. But when we reflected back on the primary call to action for almost all promotional and advertising efforts, the website was the core of the tourism organization’s efforts.
As we developed our new ranking criteria, we placed a significant emphasis on website engagement and the importance that content development plays in that process. We also utilized numbers of followers and fans to determine overall audience reach and amplification, along with placing more emphasis on the popular social networks and the engagement that each network generates.
There is a detailed breakdown of the ranking criteria and weighting scale within the report. This report covers the third quarter of 2014. We intend to publish it on a quarterly basis in the future, along with adjusting the weighting criteria to coincide with tourism industry and digital marketing trends.
You can view the entire Digital Engagement Ranking: US Tourism Office Edition, right here.
Now, we would like to congratulate the top ten states:
1) Michigan; 2) Massachusetts; 3) Oregon; 4) Louisiana; 5) Virginia; 6) North Carolina; 7) Hawaii; 8) Florida; 9) Tennessee and 10) Georgia.
Special thanks to Laura Edgington for coordinating the ranking process and Kyle Jurczak, from Michigan State University, for his help with the mathematical calculations and weighting scales.
As always, feedback, comments and ideas on improvement for the ranking are always welcome. Please be sure to leave them on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TwoSixDigital.