What these people are offering is fantastic. Honestly, the product is pure bliss.
But the day tour market is quite saturated in Iceland, with heavy competition and a lack of differentiation between major players. The old, mobile unfriendly website did our client BusTravel Iceland a few favors with its complex ecosystem of intertwined third-party services. Information architecture was confusing and visitors from all over the world (exactly the kind of which Iceland tours has many) were lost and confused, bouncing fast due to apparent lack of credibility.
Underneath, the whole thing was locked into outdated systems that weren't going anywhere tech-wise. A proper rebuild was in the works.
So we’ve redesigned the site, based on data, and then built it ourselves. From the ground up.
Luckily, there was loads of information on previous performance which enabled us to crunch the numbers and draw some useful conclusions.
Then came the client, and during a joint UX workshop, we thoroughly dissected the market, the competition, and existing customer journeys. We looked at the social presence with its many traps and opportunities and back-office ecosystem in order to understand existing mechanics. We really dismantled this thing.
That laid a foundation for defining features and the scope of an MVP with navigation and sitemap analysis. Found some time for communication exercises and related brain-storming on the creative side of things. We were ready.
On top of a lot more understanding than before (and a lot more vision), the outcome was a specific, detailed delivery document. It described the findings of our analysis and explained the reasoning behind all the decisions (which are actually the pillars of our master plan). This document served as a collection of notes on everything we’ve touched upon together, but also as a script for the development phase and all subsequent moves we have been making since the product went live.
It is very important to stick to the plan as, believe us, memories of what was agreed upon fade fast when under timeline and budget constraints and pressures.
What was in this doc?
We’ve focused on just the website MVP and related systems (faster time to market through picking high-value features).
Made sense, and the client was on board.
You’d be surprised at how often simple tools do the job. If you combine them well. And if (you guessed it) everyone sticks to the plan. Here are the features that turned this Icelandic web presence around. None of them single-handedly launched a spaceship to Mars, but, purposefully combined, they absolutely smashed it:
And so, production began. We went all agile, thus providing everyone with ample room for changes and/or updates during the process. That meant one very ugly waterfall monkey was off our back, right away. Agile project management does wonders. You should try it.
Using WordPress to avoid vendor lock-in, we started delivering features as soon as we had them, without waiting for everything to be perfect.
Used Kinsta hosting because it is specialized for WordPress. Used CDN for high availability and faster loading. For all you non-tech people out there, Content Distribution Network (CDN) is a system that makes sure that a website loads in a flash. No matter where you are physically. It’s a smart practice.
Deployed some robust caching mechanisms for good measure. Because we love proper caching. For all the right reasons.
This will sound like a great cooperation with the client, actually – the best we had. Harsh Iceland’s climate and continuous changes modeled the people there, so they are natural problem solvers and are more resilient to stressful situations and changes. That is exactly the type of client one hopes for in order to have a project go smoothly.
Let’s hop on a call and exchange ideas. We’re curious. And we don’t bite. Promise.
