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The Dolan Hotels group came to The Idea Works with a clear requirement to invigorate their product in the face of a changing market and increased competition.

We applied a strict methodology involving a brand audit and research and evaluation to clearly identify a way forward before recommending any changes. This research led us to the conclusion that despite being technically impressive and highly polished, the Dolan Hotels website failed to engage potential customers.

This area of opportunity was brought into clear focus when measured against a significant SEO budget.  Searchers were clearly disappointed with content they were finding (resulting in an approximate 50 per cent drop off on the first page viewed). We sought to address this problem via the creation of ‘experiential’ product pages – delivering interesting and appropriate content based on searches and providing an opportunity for the SEO budget to focus on more specific terms. This strategy aimed to increase the ratio between site traffic and bookings and reduce the SEO budget whilst maintaining or increasing the volume of traffic to the site.

Early stats were very encouraging, despite an overall reduction in visits to www.jersey.com Dolan Hotels exceeded their traffic and conversion rates based on their previous year's figures.

Aims
To encourage users to stay on their website after viewing the home page
To increase online bookings

Solution
To use collected research to:
Rebuild the website strategy and architecture
Rebuild the website
To repackage the hotels from different user perspectives
To rewrite the content of the website accordingly
Create web pages with specific content to optimise SEO effectiveness

Results
Potential customers were able to enter keywords of the experience they wanted from the hotel and be directed straight to pages which were rich in the desired content.
Increased site traffic
Increased site bookings

Comment
The Dolan Hotels project was particularly satisfying as it allowed us to demonstrate our trademark blend of strategy mixed with creativity. The sophisticated functionality of the website gave the three hotels in the group the dexterity to switch marketing focus, reflecting booking peaks and troughs. The results speak for themselves.