IOSH - Design, Build and Marketing
Channel were asked to design, build and then market the new Isles of Scilly Inclusive Holidays website, which went live in August 2011. The project required our complete range of Web Design, Business Systems and Digital Marketing services, so our teams were able to work together seamlessly to deliver a new website which was then promoted through SEO and email marketing. This is a classic example of how Channel can provide fanstastic ROI for your business as we remove any uneccessary duplication which so often occurs when you use a variety of suppliers on one project.
and remove the headache of your team communicating to different suppliers for one project.
Web Build and Systems Integration
Isles of Scilly Inclusive Holidays’ first came to us with a bespoke Access database in need of improvement and enhancement. Having over 10 years experience with MS Access this was quite straightforward, and the database has evolved over time to include additional reporting features, mailshots, streamlined data processing, and new ways of analysing and extracting data for company and industry reports.
With the advent of the web site there was the opportunity to generate extra value by integrating the database with the email marketing tools, to ensure that all new enquiries were effortlessly added to the email marketing list for regular communications. An integration between MS Access on the local server was built by our team.
In addition there was a requirement for better management and production of pricing information and quotes. Pricing information needs to be maintained in both the web site for display to visitors, and also produced into the printed brochure each year. This had been a major manual undertaking for some years using a variety of Excel spreadsheets and manual calculations.
By including pricing in the web site within an easy to use management area, we were able also to provide a secondary method of exporting the same data, so that the production of each year’s tariff data for the brochure could be semi-automated. This has taken a great deal of time out of this previously lengthy annual process, removed double handling of the same data and potential errors, and freed up the IOSH team to do what they do best: look after their customers and make the best travel arrangements for anyone coming to the Isles of Scilly.
Digital Marketing
The company then asked us to follow this up with a 6 month SEO campaign to now promote their website.
Our specific remit was to improve the site's Google Page Rankings for specific keywords and drive increased traffic to it in order to increase their holiday bookings.
On- and off- page optimisation
Working with Gill and Ginny, we created a core list of target keywords, based around which search phrases were important to them and which were likely to result in greater numbers of relevant visits to their website. With this seed list, we then began our campaign, centred around strong off- and on-page optimisation to generate the best possible results.
Measurable results
The campaign proved to be hugely successful on both counts. Direct Google Analytics comparisons for the relevant timescales show:
- 30% year-on-year growth in site visits between January and August 2011 and 2012
- 200% increase in total Google Pageviews over the same period
- 30% improvement in Bounce Rate
- 3,000% increase for one of their key search phrases ‘Scilly Isles’
These results really do illustrate the difference it makes by being on Page 1 of Google or not! Whilst a phrase like ‘Scilly Isles’ is not such a high converting phrase because it's so general, more specifically targeted phrases such as ‘Isles of Scilly holidays’, ‘holiday in the Scilly Isles’ and ‘Scilly Isles holidays’ all saw substantial growth in their visitor numbers.
