How to track your Sawday’s guests

How might a Sawday’s guest book with you? 

Going direct to your site 

This is by the most common way that guests will come to you through us. This involves them using the “Book with Owner” button on your Sawday’s page and landing on the area of your own site that you’ve asked us to direct that link to. Ideally, this should be a calendar or booking platform page. 

Sending enquiries 

For some owners, who have nowhere for guests to book online, the main button on a Sawday’s page will say “Send enquiry” and invite guests to email with their required dates. It’s important that if you do use this system, the email is sent to an address that you check regularly. Guests will be looking at multiple places and the speed of your response will affect their decision.  

Phone call 

The art of conversation isn’t yet completely dead, and some guests may choose to phone you and ask about booking. As with email above, make sure the number is one that you will definitely answer, as not responding may well make the guest look elsewhere. 

Indirect referral 

Indirect referral is when a guest sees your place on our site, is reassured by our recommendation and then ends up coming via another channel. Perhaps they later search for your place online, or find it on another platform. This is very hard to identify as Sawday’s guests but with the length of time most people spend making the considered purchase of a holiday, it is a common occurrence. 

How can you track your Sawday’s guests? 

Member area 

The Sawday’s Member Area is the easiest place to get an idea of how we’re doing for you. In this area you can see your page views (the number of people who have seen your page on our website) and how many of them have clicked through using the relevant button and gone to your site, if you have one. This is how 85% of our guests prefer to book. As a rule of thumb we look for a 20% click-through rate as a sign of an effective page but please note that if a user declines cookies, they will not be tracked, which could artificially lower your click-through rate. If you’re getting lots of page views but few bookings, read our tips to make the most of your page:

Seven tips for an eye-catching photo gallery >

How to gather and display reviews for maximum impact >

Our top tips for points of interest >

On your own site 

Many booking engines have a facility for asking guests how they heard about you. Remember to add Sawday’s to the list of options, so that guests can tell you they came from us. This is handy for capturing not only direct guests from our site, but also the indirect referrals mentioned earlier. 

Just ask! 

If guests phone to book, or you happen to meet them during their stay, then simply ask them where they heard about you. While you may get many responses along the lines of, “Not sure… the internet?”, you might also be pleasantly surprised to see how many of them say they found you on Sawday’s. 

Just ask later! 

If you don’t bump into guests, perhaps offering check-in via a keybox, then a follow-up email in which you ask for feedback is a good place to ask or restate the question of where a guest first saw your place.  

Site analytics 

The technically minded may be able to get data from their website platform, or something that links to it, like Google Analytics. These can provide a detailed breakdown of where guests have come from, helping you find out if social media or articles placed online are driving traffic to your site. We’ll try and let you know when we’re posting about you on social or featuring you in the online PR we frequently secure with major publications, but sometimes you might get a flurry of guests and site analytics will be able to tell you it’s because you were in say, a Sawday’s article on The Guardian. 

If you have any questions about the above, please get in touch with your Sawday’s Account Manager, who’ll be happy to talk it all through with you. Happy tracking!