Comments on: What are they doing to attract customers?

By: India Travel Search

India Travel Search — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:41:10 +0000

Readers, I suggest you try out http://www.ixigo.com - We are currently the most comprehensive (14 Airlines, 3 OTAs) and most unbiased travel search engine in the Indian market.

We can confidently claim to have the cheapest fares on any given sector on any given date since between the airlines and OTAs we show fares from, we are bound to found the cheapest options for you within a few seconds.

We show all prices with taxes included, and we dont claim to sell any 99 Rs. tickets because we want consumers to know the absolute price that hits their pockets.

Finally - try it once, and tell us if any other portal can match our prices, speed or usability, for flights.

By: Vijay Vadali

Vijay Vadali — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:16:07 +0000

Thanks a lot. The information was very valuable for my research in order to launch a new product by keeping the publicity costs low

By: Madhur

Madhur — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:53:58 +0000

Thanks for the correction Aman. They are the biggest players as far as user generated content is concerned in India. Will be interesting to see what other tricks do they use to really take themselves to the next level of the Web2.0 wave.

By: aman

aman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:10:24 +0000

well i liked mouthshut.com ’s idea of rickshaw advertising but one thing you mentioned that is wrong. mouthshut.com started rickshaw advertising in 2001 and not :recently: as u mentioned. the rickshaw program has now been copied by other dotcoms especially after mouthshut rolled it out in delhi in 2005 and i agree the domain name is critical
now see mouthshut.com is antithesis of wht they do. they ask peopel to speak up about products and services. amazing idea!!

By: Vivek Garg

Vivek Garg — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 19:46:40 +0000

Agreed Aditya, Domain name in itself doesnt do much unless you have a solid product. On the other hand a relevant domain name can bring in traffic that otherwise would go somewhere else.

take an example of google, live, ask and yahoo search and their query share. Google is not a relevant name at all for search but it has become synonymous to search now with a very strong product. Similar to xerox and jeep I would say. These are the brand names that have become a verb now. Flickr and delicious are not a verb but they are a strong brand in their offering space.

On the other hand ask.com is gaining some query share because of such a relevant domain name to the extent that people are googling on ask.com. read more here
http://blog.ask.com/2006/10/you_do_andor_ma.html

By: Aditya

Aditya — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 07:38:24 +0000

HI Ravi,

I would differ on the argument that generic names are better. Take for example zappos.com or flickr, delicious none of them say what they do in their names yet they have high recall value.

Could be that these were the pioneers or among the early beginners in hteir respective spaces.

By: Madhur

Madhur — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:37:47 +0000

Ok, makes sense. It’s interesting how Google results are completely different for the queries you mention above. I guess for them domain name is weighing in lower than other factors, which when you improve, domain name will help eventually.

By: Ravi Venkatraman

Ravi Venkatraman — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:02:16 +0000

Madhur,
It’s the combination of all of the above.
Up to 15% percent of the search traffic is type-in traffic.(includes sites that are bookmarked)
For niche sites that one does not use on a daily or weekly basis or used only when you are in market for the specific reason, the Generic would work the best and it usually has better recall value.
(Example: Vacation, Shopping, Jobs etc.)

From SEO perspective, all other thing being equal, the generic sites gets higher ranking in search engines like MSN & Yahoo for that generic keyword.
(search the following keywords in msn.co.in with “India only option”: Shop, Hindi, Property, “Pune Realestate” etc.)
In addition, you get lower PPC pricing as the CTR (Click Thru Rate) is usually high on these ads.

Although, generic domain name purchase may appear expensive, its much cheaper on the long run.
There is no. recurring cost (other than the registration fee) for the subsequent years.

By: Madhur Khandelwal

Madhur Khandelwal — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 03:29:06 +0000

Good points Ravi. I understand that generic keyword domain names are good, but what do you think are the real tangible benerfits of using such names? Is it because people just like them or they are more likey to type them or more easy to remember or for SEO or anything else?

By: Ravi Venkatraman

Ravi Venkatraman — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 14:31:45 +0000

Here are couple of ways of attracting targeted customers.

1) Use PPC for specific keywords.
(You don’t have to pay a fortune, we pay .03 to .05 per click on our real estate related keywords in India)

2) Useing Generic keyword domain name to get targetted type in traffic.
Examples:
Bank of America’s purchase of Loans.com for $3 million.
ABN amro purchase of Mortgage.com for £1.8 million.
I am sure these companies would have realized their ROI from these purchases.
The founder of WebHosting.com, Jesse Rasch, has posted a on his blog that details how he built his multi-million dollar company and the role that acquiring his great generic domain name had in the company’s success.
http://www.jesserasch.com/jesse_rasch/2006/12/entrepreneurial.html