Dealchecker breaks 1m visitor mark

Travel comparison site dealchecker experienced a significant boost in visitors to the website for the first quarter of the year. Website visitors were up 55% in January year-on-year, 72% in February and around 73% in March when the service broke more than a million visitors for the first time. Chief executive Alex Saint said that…

Travel comparison site dealchecker experienced a significant boost in visitors to the website for the first quarter of the year.

Website visitors were up 55% in January year-on-year, 72% in February and around 73% in March when the service broke more than a million visitors for the first time.

Chief executive Alex Saint said that a combination of pay-per-click advertising via a dedicated in-house team, search engine optimisation and affiliate partnerships, including a deal with Essential Travel, had contributed to the increase in traffic.

“Having an in-house team has made a huge difference. You get much better focus when you spend hours on PPC as opposed to an agency which has multiple clients although we’re still using an agency to do some of the legwork.”

Dealchecker’s subscriber database has grown to 775,000, up 62% year-on-year, with 90,000 added in the first quarter of 2010.

Saint said the company has big plans for the subscriber side of the business had been experimenting with display advertising across the web on portals including Yahoo and MSN. He also said the company is working on a major cruise initiative to be unveiled in the next couple of weeks.