Balancing Short and Long-Term Needs: HawaiiTours.com

At Web-Op, we recognize for some clients, it's not just a matter of rolling out one site and optimizing. Client Background It goes without saying that HawaiiTours.com is a high-value domain. It's been around for several years, and it's stuffed with the most obvious keyword for a particular type of travel searcher. However, prior to early 2009, HawaiiTours.com was built as a simple duplicate of another site the client owned. A duplicate site is the least search-friendly way to extend your brand, since it will forever be penalized in the search results. In addition to lacking original content, the Hawaii Tours site had confusing navigation and no clear call to action. In fact, only by extremely careful looking was it clear the site was a tour-related business.

Emergency Website Turnaround

These problems couldn't wait for a complete site revamp. With our existing technical assets, we were able to roll out a Hawaii Tours branded tour sales site in a matter of weeks. On April 24, 2009, the temporary site went live, and we began to take control of the site's search position. Released from the weight of duplicate content, we collaborated with Hawaii Tours staff to prepare fresh and exciting tour descriptions, dramatically increasing the value of the page. The site also featured a cleaner navigation, free of the distractions which didn't lead to tour sales.

The search engines noticed and responded quickly. Traffic went from 2,089 visits in May to 6,431 in June. The search engine based share jumped from under 70% to over 80% between that period.

Long Term Development Plans

We knew from the beginning that the original site was a temporary solution, meant as a response for the severity of their ranking problems. Installing it achieved several key goals:

Building new content which can be the basis for future rankings.
Letting the new site structure "age" and become indexed.
Allowing commerce to go on while development on the final site took place.
Providing a source of trackable data for customer interactions and staff experience which can serve as a baseline for the final site.

Our long-term solution is the new Explore API system. Building a site around the API dramatically extends its potential power, with support for affiliate business logging, comprehensive self-service workflows, more pricing options, and syndicating tour content to other websites. In addition, by deploying a prototype quickly, we were able to learn more about their operational process and business needs, and craft the final product to match their needs and expectations better than simply working from a prepared spec document. On August 7, the new site, powered by the Explore API system, went live. The increasingly streamlined booking process and easy upsells has lead to the following results in just the first few weeks:

73% increase in conversion rate leading to 100% increase in transactions
$72 increase in average order size-- over 40%
181% revenue increase

(Comparison timeframes: 8.21.2009-9.6.2009 vs. 9.8.2009-9.25.2009)

Conclusion

Web-Op is ready to provide you with short- and long-term solutions to fit your website needs. We recognize that some projects are best done with iterative development styles, and are willing to build a system to fit into your business processes.