CASE STUDY - Crusader Travel
The challenge
Crusader Travel is a travel agency based in Twickenham, UK. They have been arranging travel and holidays for local, national and international customers for many years. They are British pioneers in the diving-holiday market.
When we started working on this project, Crusader Travel’s website was over ten years old, created with little user-experience thinking.
Navigation was difficult, typography and colours abstracted readability, and lack of content guidelines had resulted in inconsistently written and styled content.
To make any updates to content, the company was dependent on IT staff with coding skills and these weren’t always available.
Overall, the website did not represent the company well, and was not conducive to healthy customer conversions.
The approach we took
Strategy workshop and stakeholder interviews
Crusader’s marketing, sales and accounts staff attended a workshop and 1-on-1 chats. This inspired a lot of healthy conversation in the company.
We co-created a set of core values and developed a new brand-story and a clear differentiation from competitors.
We provided Crusader Travel with a strategic digital roadmap.
Competitor analysis
We looked at competition in the market to create a benchmark.
Customer research
We identified high-potential audience segments and arranged several 1-on-1 research interviews.
Talking to potential customers gave light to insight into how people used online research to book holidays, what made them happy and what they found challenging. We received helpful feedback about the old website as well as competitors’.
We ran an online survey and got lots of people to tell us what was important to them when booking holidays, in their own words.
Information architecture sessions
We worked together with the Crusader team to create user-friendly navigation. We used card sorting exercises and drew user-journeys. It involved a lot of sticky posted notes!
Wireframes creation
We then sat down to sketch out the website – where each content item should sit on each page, how prominent it should be etc.
Design and development
We shared all the material we’ve accumulated with the visual designers, and they produced a beautiful mock-up of what the final website should look like, in Photoshop.
Next came the technical development – creating a WordPress website based on the designs. An agile, iterative approach meant the client got to see the website forming from very early on and test each feature as it was created. This meant a healthy feedback loop and a timely delivery. There were no disappointing surprises, instead we worked to deliver creative solutions.
Training and knowledge sharing
During earlier stages in the project, we identified areas that Crusader Travel would benefit from learning more about: SEO and web Analytics.
They would use their SEO skills to write content for the web in a way that would extend their reach, and Analytics would allow them to set goals, see what works and what doesn’t work, and adjust their activities effectively.
Bespoke training sessions were developed especially for them, available to all their staff online with a live trainer, and later on video.
Once the system had been installed on the client’s server (we helped them procure a great hosting deal), we met them for onsite demos of how to update the new website. We also provided a bespoke video library for future reference, with step-by-step guides on how to use their new CMS.
The result
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A WordPress responsive website, design that everyone loves
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Highly optimised for search engines = more traffic
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Engaging content and easy to navigate = more conversions to enquiries
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Easy to update = time and effort saving, gives the client independence
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Actionable measurement process = gradual improvements over time
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Knowledgeable staff with renewed enthusiasm to growing their online presence
