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Nucleus provided Haven with a user friendly website
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URL: www.haven.com
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Key Industries:
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Entertainment & Leisure
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Travel
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Key Sectors:
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Content Management
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Design & Build
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e-commerce
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Optimisation
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Usability
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Haven Holidays
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Brief
Haven Holidays, the UK’s leading holiday parks operator invested over £40 million on enhancements to its Parks during 2008 and briefed Nucleus to develop a website that showcased these upgrades, improved the user experience and which would drive an improved guest demographic and generate higher average order values.
The existing site was dated and did not fully communicate the refreshed exciting holiday experience Haven can now deliver. Nucleus was selected to design and develop a new Haven Holidays website which appealed to both new and existing customers and helped them to research and book their holidays in an innovative and interactive way.
Exciting new customers and drawing them to the brand, increasing average booking values in the process, while maintaining bookings from existing Haven ‘loyals’ were core requirements, with the particularly challenging economic environment adding to the challenge.
Strategy/Execution
The solution was to rethink the website from scratch, starting with a careful analysis of all the business, user, brand and technical requirements.
From an agreed and documented set of requirements, we then defined a new site
architecture to encourage a seamless visitor flow towards the booking process. A highly visible ‘Search and Book’ box appears throughout the site and Ajax technology has been used extensively across the site to allow users to access information to support the buying decision without moving out of the core booking process.
The creative approach involved the use of larger and more compelling images and integrated other content assets in an innovative and interactive user experience, which tells the Haven story and provides the user with a simple way of researching and booking holidays. The emphasis is on the Park facilities, the holiday experience and on the detailed information needed to select ‘the right holiday for you’. There is less focus on special offers although the facility for Haven to promote and merchandise specific deals remains an important element of the design.
This large and complex website has been developed using Tridion 5.3 as the content management system which allows for easy content update and which has also been used to ‘blueprint’ the site and create bespoke versions for the groups and travel agent markets.
The site architecture was optimised for search engines and each page carefully considered, with descriptors, page titles, keywords and alt tags chosen to reinforce Haven’s authority in the UK holiday sector.
Results
The site launched in November 2008 – on time and on budget. It is still too early to quote precise data on site performance during a traditionally slow period for holiday sales although early metrics show a substantial increase in visitors and a strong trend in conversions.
The ultimate judgement will be the degree to which the new site converts existing customers and attracts and converts new guests at improving transaction values. Early indications are very positive.
Internally, Haven believes the website is a major step forward and has rewarded Nucleus with several new projects.
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