THE CHALLENGE
Gibe Digital were awarded the opportunity to redevelop the new Southampton International Airport website in 2014. The travel website needed to inform travellers about arrivals, departures, travel disruption and access to the airport as well as improve conversion for services that generate revenue for Southampton Airport.
This needed to happen before former Southampton Airport owners, BAA switched off the lights for the existing Southampton Airport website, so we had to work quickly.
Gibe Digital were awarded the opportunity to redevelop the new Southampton International Airport website in 2014. The travel website needed to inform travellers about arrivals, departures, travel disruption and access to the airport as well as improve conversion for services that generate revenue for Southampton Airport.
The travel industry is dynamic and changing. Amongst trendy home-sharing services and complex flight booking engines we needed to strike a balance to make Southampton Airport inspire future travellers to use the excellent services available and bring in more revenue to the airport.
We used Umbraco CMS to provide a user-friendly content management system that Southampton Airport administrators could use independently of support. We gave them the ability to look after travel information, general day to day updates and SEO requirements in-house. Bespoke integration was part and parcel of the new website with flight timetables, priority lounge booking, flight deals, travel information and parking booking systems that displayed in real time on the Southampton Airport website. We took some of the chaos out of travel by making the airports’ online experience as simple and intuitive to use across all devices to accommodate a range of contextual environments.
From scamps and wireframes to design concepts, we simplified the user experience to target key user groups visiting the airport website. We carried out usability testing that helped us to further refine key user journeys and the information architecture of the website.
We provided a more seamless customer experience and promoted more flight and hotel deals to build year on year growth by integrating with Airport Direct Travel, which centralised flight offers, holiday packages and trip bookings, transforming the digital offering.
The stats confirmed we had smashed the KPI targets agreed during project kick off. The extra push for revenue-generating features, such as parking, saw a dramatic increase in profit since launch. We increased number of mobile visitors by 130% and increased average time on site by three minutes. At Gibe we don’t just build a website and leave. We continue to work with our clients to transform the digital experience and build year on year growth in their businesses.
"We're delighted with our new website, it looks fantastic and the functionality is vastly improved. The content management system has been particularly easy to use and the site has a lot more potential than ever before. Gibe have been a pleasure to work with; they’re a knowledgeable and professional team who have made the whole process very simple."