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Just released a hotfix to combine the rent items into one total item by type. You'll get one for rent and one for each type of surcharge or tax.
Let me know if this solves the way its showing up in the GA eCommerce for you.
Hmm. I wonder if they only record one item per sku. We'll try combining all rent into one line item.
Just FYI, it looks better, but not catching all the rent items per transaction. such as, I had booking ORB924172:
Rent 3 nights (9/9, 9/10, 9/14) during Low season - Fall at Weekend Night rate at $245.00 per Weekend Night 735.00 $735.00
Rent 3 nights (9/11 - 9/13) during Low season - Fall at Weekday Night rate at $195.00 per Weekday Night 585.00 $585.00
"rent for Blue Mountain Lodge" under Ecommerce>Transactions>ORB924172 only shows the "rent $585.00"
The $735.00 is not listed.
Tax and cleaning fee are OK.
Not crucial for me, but may be crucial for someone who processes a lot of transactions.
We've added another view type to the main bookings menu. There is now a "Year" view which shows you a full year of calendars for a single property at a time.
We added this view so that you can quickly see the full picture of how well a property is booked for the current year. The top scroll (right/left) buttons allow you to jump between years.
Just like the ribbon and month view, you can hover over bookings to see more information or click empty days to get a quick quote.
If you're suddenly feeling a sense of deja vu, it's probably because we recently released a year calendar widget that looks similar. This booking view is similar to the calendar widget, only enhanced for styling and interactive behavior.
This makes four different views you can use to look at your bookings. Here's a refresher on the other three...
Ribbon View
Month View
List View (read about our awesome filter, sorting and exporting)
Wonderful! I once built a site for owners to list on using Drupal. It wasn't easy! This was in 2011. It also wasn't easy to get owners to list with you. Maybe the recent nightmares with Homeaway, drop with Flipkey etc will prove different now. Definitely worth considering! I would love to use your script and help this time around. Will reach out if/when ready for it.
:)
A few of us are testing a site this summer with our HOA. We are all located in the same building at a ski resort. We discussed how to set it up and agreed we did not want another full blown vrbo site for users to manage. Our site will be free to our homeowners and we can add their ical to our search function.
http://snowshoevrbo.com/
Once we work out a few kinks, we'll send out a mass email to all owners in our building who self manage their condos.
OK, I've cleaned that up a bit. You'll now see "Rent for <Property>" in the rent line items. I left the surcharges as a simple description without the property name because they can apply to multiple properties.
This won't update the existing data in GA, unfortunately, but it'll apply for new bookings.
Silly question, but where can I view Pixel results? I can see GA conversions in GA, but where can I see the pixel conversions? is in in FB settings someplace? TIA
Yes, products like:
Rent
Tax
Cleaning fee
Without dates, else we'll have different rent "product" for each set of dates booked.
Even better if it is:
<Property> rent
<property> tax
<property> cleaning fee
But if not that is great too because I can see the "transaction" for each booking that I can relate to a property.
TIA
Hmm. How would you categorize it instead? Perhaps there should be one "Rent" product with the property name vs. including the dates? But I'd assume you want cleaning fee et. al. to break out as well? Or would you only want the Rent as a product?
overall products. Transactions look fine. It looks like every date range is a "product", so is cleaning fee, deposit and tax.
Is that the overall products or in one transaction? The way its set up now, each charge in the charges list is a separate "product".
It appeared but looks kind of funny; here is athe list of "products".
Product Quantity % Quantity
1.
Refundable Security/Damage Deposit (non taxable) based on $300.00 per stay
3 33.33%
2.
Cleaning Fee based on $150.00 per stay
2 22.22%
3.
2 nights (11/17, 11/18) during Holiday at $389.00 per Night
1 11.11%
4.
4 nights (7/14 - 7/17, departing 7/18) during Summer peak at $219.00 per Night
1 11.11%
5.
6 nights (11/20 - 11/25, departing 11/26) during Thanksgiving at $389.00 per Night
1 11.11%
6.
Cleaning Fee based on $115.00 per stay
We tracked down an issue where the new FB tracking pixel code was conflicting with the GA eCommerce code for certain total booking amounts. This should now be solved, and I retriggered those bookings to be recorded in GA eCommerce.
Let me know if you see the values once you get another booking.
Sweet! Looking forward to it.
It is correct because I see when someone accesses quote widget in "real time". I also see bunch of 'widget" links entries under behavior>overview
But nothing but standard GA entries under Conversions> Ecommerce> overview
Are you seeing page views or events under Behavior? Or no data at all from OwnerRez?
It looks like the tracking setup is working and I've checked it on a couple other sites and the ecommerce is tracking.
Can you double check the google tracking id you have (with the -5 suffix) is the correct one for the site you've enabled ecommerce on? Sometimes you can have multiple different sites set up in GA and you've got to drill into the right one to see the data.
I have had bookings 4/5, 4/8, 4/11. Still see nothing under GA> Ecommerce> overview. Only see 3 default GA categories :(
Hi Chris
Bob Bourassa is building a website for us.
Our domain is floridarentalbyowners.com
I'll let you know when it's up!
Michele
Great to hear! It's a matter of building up the regional sites bit by bit. I've actually made one as well for the area around my vacation rental cabins: https://shenandoahcabinrentals.com
You're right, it may be tougher to build a new site in an area where there already are a bunch. It'd be a great experiment for sure.
You've given me another good idea -- we should have a list of all known regional sites to help out owners with finding places to list, and identify regions that might need more sites or not.
I've started with a few here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/regional-listing-sites
If you know of or own a regional site, let me know and I'll add it to the list.
I absolutely LOVE this concept. A group of us are working on something similar at our ski resort in WV. I don't want to hijack this thread so when we get a little further along and post in another thread.
Personally, I hate what vrbo has done to their long time users. 12 years ago one of my listings was #1 on the default page for our ski resort out of 100+ listings. Then it all went to hell. Now there are 421 listings which are a mix of true rentals by owner and managed properties.
I thought VRBO stood for Vacation Rentals By Owner. Not Some Vacation Rentals By Owners and Some By Property Managers. People still identify "vrbo "not home away - at least in my markets.
I think the biggest challenge is ranking a regional site in a competitive areas - like Myrtle Beach, SC. There are soooo many sites listing rentals, it's impossible to compete.
Bob - good luck - I wish your site all the success in the world !!!!
The following is a guest post written by Bob Bourassa of CarolinaVacationHomeRentals.com.
As the hammer slowly comes down on vacation rentals owners from HomeAway and other sites -- and we all knew this was coming -- many new vacation listing sites are popping up trying to capitalize on owners who are dissatisfied with the direction this is all going. Some old listing sites that have lived in the shadows for years are trying to become relevant. Service fees, limited cancellation policy options, worst best match, forced BIN. It is only going to get worse for owners.
Some of the new vacation rental listing sites are trying to capture a national or worldwide audience. However, they lack the capital to effectively market on that level and have shown little success. Without the cash to back it up, they can never be an effective alternative to the big guys who have been in the market for years.
A viable alternative is Regional Vacation Rental Listing sites.
Why regional sites? Unlike national vacation listing sites that have been developed since HomeAway began its changes, regional sites do not require massive amounts of marketing dollars in order to be even remotely competitive. Regional sites can target their marketing efforts on specific areas where typical vacationers come from, thus being more effective for far less money.
Since we developed Carolina Vacation Home Rentals in response to the detrimental changes to the industry caused by HomeAway, we have received numerous inquiries on what what it would cost to develop another regional vacation rental site. They asked what script we used for our site and what is involved, and they expressed frustration with the lack of options available for developing such a site The amount quoted from developers ranged anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000.
We have since created several regional sites for others using the script we used (Texas, South Jersey, etc.) and are currently working on one for all of Hawaii. We also plan to create a single site that will link to all of the regional sites to help travelers find what they are looking for without service fees.
So, where do you start?
There are multiple scripts available that can be used for creating a regional vacation rental listing site. However, most of them are clones that come out of Asia and are geared towards the AirBnB model. While AirBnB does have it's niche market, it often does not fit well with vacation rental owners. The clone scripts require substantial customization to fit the needs of vacation rental owners, which can easily run up the development costs. Some have also expressed frustration with difficult communication with the developers due to the language barriers.
A simpler option for some has been to use the WordPress platform and purchase a $54 theme. As a 18 year web developer, I can tell you definitively that WordPress is not the answer. It may be fine for creating a small homemade site, but it would be wholly ineffective at being used for a larger listing site. This is not an alternative we would ever consider, nor recommend in creating a viable regional vacation rental listing site.
Before we developed Carolina Vacation Home Rentals we evaluated all of the scripts that were available and tested each one thoroughly before choosing which script to use. Most of them would not do what was needed. The script we chose does everything that is required, and much more. We chose it because it was capable of being a back to basics HomeAway & VRBO type website (our ultimate goal) without forcing vacation rental owners into restrictive cancellation policies -- being able to display contact information and not having to charge service fees among other things. We found the script to be extremely versatile and contain a lot of additional functions that we disabled because they were not needed in what we were creating.
The script has an online quote system which we left entirely optional as to whether the vacation rental owner wants to use it. Some owners do, and some owners don’t. It generates a quick quote and then allows a person to request a booking. Visitors also still have the option of contacting the owner through the inquiry form as well or calling the owner. One of the goals for our site was to offer the options to the owners and leave it up to them as to whether they would like to use the tools provided. Owners also have the option of whether they want to display their calendar, rates or phone number. We left it completely up to them.
Even though the script does have the capability of accepting online payments for bookings, after careful consideration, we decided not to offer an online payment system for bookings. After researching the matter and seeing what is happening with AirBnB and state tax authorities it really wasn’t something we wanted to delve into. There was too much uncertainty and possible liability. We leave it entirely up to the owners to use their own payment processing. This fits with our policy to allow vacation rental owners as much flexibility as possible without restricting them to any certain way to do things.
Other features we have in our site that are available with the script are:
So, what would it cost for your to start your own Regional Vacation Rental Listing website using the script and method we used? Not as much as you think:
So, your initial costs for all of the essential scripts and third party services for your site would run you less than $1,000.00, with annual recurring costs of about $500.00.
We spent many hundreds of hours customizing our site -- look, feel & operation -- to get it to work and look as we wanted. As our site grew we made other modifications based on both owner and user experiences and asked owners for feedback and made adjustments based on their preferences. We still make tweaks as we feel are needed based upon how people interact and use our site.
Does that mean you would have to spend hundreds of hours on your own regional vacation rental listing site before it is even launched? Well, you could, but there is an easier way.
Once you have purchased the necessary scripts, the editable site files from our site, which have been customized, can then be used to overwrite your site files and tweaked accordingly. This saves a lot of time of having to manually customize your site and do everything we did for ours. However, there is still a lot of manual configuration that has to be done setting up regions, rental types, guides, slideshow, features, activities etc. However, as we are intimately familiar with the script and it's capabilities, we can get this done faster than you would if you were to have to learn the system from scratch.
If you wanted to take the quick route and have use do the setup and customization for you, the cost would be $1,000.00 for us to customize your site and get it up and running. That's less than $2,000.00 startup cost for your own Regional Vacation Rentals Listing Website. We could have your site completed in 3-4 weeks.
We do need to let you know that operating a regional vacation rental listing site does require some time be put into it. It is not a static site that you can build and just let go on it's own. You will have some interactions with property owners and site visitors. So, if you are not able to devote time to the site this may not be a good option for you. It is a business opportunity and like any business, it requires nurturing and attention. However, we found that as time progressed and we tweaked our site based on user experience, that the amount of time we have had to dedicated to maintaining the site greatly diminished.
You will also find that there will be some expenses for marketing your site. This may be in the form of ads on search engines or social media, or just getting hands on and promoting your site in other arenas. We can offer guidance to you from our experience of what works, and what doesn't.
Some of the difficulties we've encountered is getting owners to list their properties. A lot of owners are simply oblivious to what is going on. Believe it or not there are still some owners who do not know HomeAway charges a service fee. Getting travelers to come to your site is easy, it is the owners who are difficult.
For those owners who have listed with us, we found we needed to offer a little guidance along the way, not just for listing with us, but for listing on other sites. Some were using dated photos of their rental (some even with 2011 time stamps), didn't list their rates far enough in advance, had short unappealing descriptions etc. Listing your vacation rental anywhere, you still have to sell it and stand out. If you have a crappy photo and one paragraph description, you are not exactly enticing people to rent your house.
Starting a Regional Vacation Rental Listing site is a great business opportunity for someone who wants to start their own business and help vacation rental owners.
We will be happy to answer any questions you might have, so don't hesitate to contact us.
Bob Bourassa
www.carolinavacationhomerentals.com
Oh, i see. no I have not had a booking yet, I thought the quote will trigger it (when person does quote on the website via widget), I guess i will wait till after a booking! Thanks
That's the right place, but have you had bookings since you turned it on? The last booking I see in your account was 3/26.
GA only captures events going forward, so you'd need a new booking to come in to trigger it.
Chris Hynes said:
Usually it will take a day or two for the items to accumulate once you turn it on. Are there events from a couple days after you've turned it on that are a couple days ago?
Usually it will take a day or two for the items to accumulate once you turn it on. Are there events from a couple days after you've turned it on that are a couple days ago?
BlueMtnCabins said:
I have enabled ecommerce in GA for the tracking ID I have assigned to OR, but still see no events listed under ecommerce? GA has 3 default GA categories with 0 in all of them. Or I should wait longer for GA to accumulate data?
I have enabled ecommerce in GA for the tracking ID I have assigned to OR, but still see no events listed under ecommerce? GA has 3 default GA categories with 0 in all of them. Or I should wait longer for GA to accumulate data?
Honestly I am not sure,. Every time I look at FB ad manager, the interface changes, so I am thoroughly confused! Maybe it is one....
I believe you can create one pixel that is for all of your FB pages. Are you seeing an indication somewhere that each FB page has its own pixel?
