Background to the Project
West Dorset Leisure Holidays is a family run business that operates five holiday parks in Dorset along the Jurassic Coast – Highlands End, Golden Cap, Graston Copse, Larkfield and Sandyholme. We have worked with Martin and James Cox on their website strategy over the years and got to know their team and the business very well.
Our Challenge
We are proud to have helped WDLH through a number of digital challenges, watching them grow in to one of the best holiday parks in the UK.
We’ve helped WDLH through multiple iterations of its website, from early browsers to responsive, phone-friendly experiences; single websites to multisite environments.
The latest version represents a simplification of their website offering; whilst adding greater integration with their Prophet park booking system.
Our Approach
Smartphone usage across the hospitality sector has increased significantly over the last couple of years, so we adopted a mobile-first process, designing initially for smaller screens before expanding for larger devices. This ensures that the information needs of the key audience type – on-the-go tourists – are fully catered for.
Other enhancements including, extensive API integration with their online booking system, intuitive navigation and prominent cross sells, all helping to create a smooth user flow and a positive booking experience that reflects the guest offering at West Dorset Leisure Holidays.
Our Results
This was a major website re-build that took three months to complete – consolidating several websites, adding in new guest functionality and improving the online booking experience.
Up until now the booking process had been somewhat disjointed, with guests leaving the WDLH website to search for availability and book. In this new incarnation we developed the Prophet API connections to bring search availability and accommodation options into the WDLH website – creating a seamless booking journey.
We added in new guest tools such as a comprehensive “Things to do” section, holiday planner and interactive FAQs. Our close ongoing support with the WDLH team means any additional functionality can be quickly addressed.
The website is performing exceptionally well and receiving great feedback from the Park guests. The five original sites that we consolidated ranked well in the search engine results so we put in place a number of things like 301 redirects and SEO controls to ensure none of that SEO legacy work was lost. The site continues to be well indexed by Google and delivers strong traffic.
We work hard to optimise the site for speed and following moving the site to a new dedicated hosting environment it is now achieving 90/100+ on Google’s page speed test.
WDLH retain us on an on-going basis to provide support for their online growth and improve customer engagement and bookings.
Key Project Facts
- 10 year involvement – Strategic support for web and social media
- 150% traffic increase – Increase in website traffic since 2014
- API integration – seamless booking integration with 3rd party Prophet booking system
- Holiday planner – interactive “things to do” and itineraries
- FAQ tool – interactive FAQs
