MillsMash

This page contains an overview of some the projects that I have had the pleasure of working on and the work that entailed to produce the sites.

Ramada Jarvis

Ramada Jarvis own and operate over 40 hotels throughout the United Kingdom based on a franchise with Ramada International Hotels & Resorts. Although Ramada International maintain their own website, Ramada Jarvis did not feel that the site maximised the online potential to increase sales and service customer needs. Nor did they feel that it meet the standards that the UK market place has come to expect of the Hotel industry in the UK.

In the autumn of 2007 Equator where selected to completely redesign and redevelop the Ramada Jarvis website and booking process to reposition the site as a market leader and address the failings of their previous site and Ramada International’s site.

The following areas where identified for the focus of the redesign:

1. Customers must be able to easily find the best suited hotel for the customer’s requirements,
2. Customers must be able to easily book at their preferred hotel,
3. The site should make customers aware of other various other products and services that are available at the hotels including
   weddings, meetings and leisure activities,
4. Customers should be able find out detailed information about the hotel they will be staying in and its surrounding areas,
5. The website should work in tandem and complement any marketing campaigns undertaken by Ramada and Ramada Jarvis, both online and offline, seamlessly.
6. Finally the website should be seen as the first destination for any customer, potential or existing, wishing to find out
   information and book at a Ramada Jarvis hotel.

Search & Book

Ultimately the aim of the website is to provide a means for customers to quickly and easily find and book the hotel of their choice. To achieve this the booking engine was overhauled to make it far easier for customers to find the most appropriate rate as well as providing new up-selling opportunities including special offers on rooms and B&B, Champagne and Fruit baskets. A number of other
features where added to assist customers including a dynamic text box which suggests possible destinations as the customer types in the box, an interactive Google map to display search results and the ability to easily see availability for days either side of the customers search criteria.

It was later discovered that over half of Ramada Jarvis’s online sales where originating from 3^rd party websites even though the Ramada Jarvis would guarantee the best rate and so a further requirement was added to highlight these factors and other benefits of booking through the Ramada Jarvis website rather than competitors like LastMinute.com.

Hotel Information

To ensure customers had access to detailed and accurate information we worked with the hotel managers and a number of third parties to source the best information to display. One the hardest issues with a site and organisation of this size is ensuring the information provided is as up-to-date as possible and so the site has been designed to aggregate information from a wide range of sources, e.g. Whats On When (WoW), to provide the customer with detailed information which not only covered each hotel and its facilities but also events and attractions in the surrounding area. By using WoW, RJ where able ensure that the information presented was accurate, concise and up-to-date without having to rely on their hotel staff that may not have the skill set and time to maintain the pages.

To further improve the sites performance and appearance the imagery across the whole site was updated and new media formats where introduced to provide customers with detailed views of the rooms and facilities at the hotels, these included 360 degree panoramic views as well as video and slide shows.

On top of this the site was designed from the outset to highlight and provide access to other products and services which are available at each of the hotels. These include the ability to hold weddings, events and business meetings as well as attending pre-arranged events. Each of these services now have their own dedicated section on the main navigation of the site as well as a subsection with each of the appropriate hotels to enable customers to quickly and easily see all the services on offer at each of the hotels.

Measuring success

The redesign and development of the site was a huge and costly undertaking by Ramada Jarvis and as such proof was required of the success of the site. Not only that but with such a radical overhaul of a large site certain features and functionality may not be as successful as initially thought as so it is important to track the success of all areas of the site and make refinements where possible.

From the outset we were very vocal about the requirement to implement a professional analytics package (i.e. not Google Analytics) which could provide both Ramada Jarvis and the agency with an array of reports and figures which would enable us to measure the success of the site. It’s for this reason that we persuaded Ramada Jarvis to invest in Omnitures SiteCatalyst which would collect vital information on how customers where using the site and placing bookings, which areas where working and more importantly which area’s where failing. SiteCatalyst also provides detailed information on the success of marketing campaigns from all mediums enable Equator’s marketing team to see and feedback in real time the success of campaigns they where managing.

Although the site has only recently gone live initial response from the public and interim figures seem to suggest that the site is succeeding in driving sales and satisfying customers.

Haven Holidays

Haven holidays is a great example of how the internet in the UK has broken through the traditional rich/poor divide. Haven holidays (part of Bourne Leisure) provide traditional park based holidays in the UK similar to those at Butlins. For the most part the accommodation is within static caravans although a selection of chalets are available.

Before the uptake of the internet the majority of Haven holiday bookings came through their call centre and Equator was tasked with improving the website experience for the customer and driving up sales via the online booking engine. In 2005 Haven holidays website accounted for £700,000 worth of business (around 1% of total revenues). In 2006 the website increased revenues to £7,000,000; £35,000,000 in 2007 and by 2008 revenues from online sales were expected to surpass to £70,000,000 overtaking revenues generated by telephone and other offline sales.

This was achieved not by simply improving the website experience and information but by partnering this with an aggressive online marketing campaign including targeted email campaigns, high quality SEO refinement and a constant refinement of PPC campaigns. Haven Holidays have been one of the most savvy online customers that I have had the pleasure to work with mainly because they had a non-stop desire to refine and improve the web experience for their customers. This did not just mean constantly updating and improving content but also looking at new ways to engage the customer online using new technologies, providing games and other interactive elements and by encouraging the customer to participate with the website.

Haven Holidays where one of the first companies to take the idea of Web Analytics seriously and use it as a daily, sometimes even hourly tool, to measure the success of their booking engine, special offers and particular areas of the site. Using this information they were able to tweak the site and campaigns to drive sales to particular parks at particular times.

Haven Holidays also employed the use of email in a much more dynamic way. They where one of the first companies to enable customers to save their bookings and quotes for a set period of time and crucially they emailed customers when uncompleted bookings were about to expire or when new offers which matched the customers criteria became available. Email campaigns were not just template newsletters either, each one was a unique design incorporating characters from the parks to create engaging, fun and vibrant emails attracting customers to open the email and read the offers.

Unfortunately in 2008 Haven decided to part company with Equator and partner with another digital agency who have since re-designed the site. Although I appreciate that I have a natural biased I can’t help but feel that the current website does not match the quality and effectiveness of the sites i had the pleasure of being involved with. To see some of the screen shots of the previous incarnation of the site please visit: http://blog.eqtr.com/2008/06/haven-holidays/

Highland Spring Water

In 2007 Equator where selected to re-invigorate Highland Springs online presence starting with a redesign of their website. The purpose of the site was to improve the online experience and brand awareness, inform and educate the customer and extend Highland Springs global reach. The new site had to reflect the brand values which Highland Spring have cultivated over the years and as such the website was to be clean and crisp with a certain coolness and attractiveness which befits a refreshment. It was for this reason that flash was chosen as the main technology to drive the site as it provided unique features and interaction which would have been impossible with just HTML.

Naturally the site had to be accessible and SEO friendly to meet legal requirements and make the site easier to find using natural search terms. And so it was decided to produce a second alternative version of the site which would be produced using only HTML, CSS and Javascript.

As with any modern website it had to have areas which were capable of being content managed so changes could be easily and quickly made by the client without requiring constant interaction which presented a challenge as the site had been created using Adobe Flash which is not known to be very flexible when working with HTML content. Flash also does not lend itself to enabling bookmarks so that customers could easily navigate back to certain areas of the for later reference. Needless to say after a week of painful development with a flash guru, Patrick Bjorkman, the two of us succeed in delivering a modern crisp site which has seen a 10 fold increase in visitors and access to the supply packs.
Job Done!