Launching a new river cruise website for Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines

Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines is UK cruise line operator operating four ocean cruise liners.

They had been operational as an ocean-going passenger cruise line since the 1900s and were looking to evolve their offering to incorporate a new river boat to their fleet.

The client was looking to effectively market its new river cruise product as a new variation within its existing product portfolio.

As the river cruise product needed to be marketed with different branding, pricing structure, configurations and front-end displays, it was important that the new offering had its own dedicated website. However, although it would be built as a separate site, the client needed it to share existing functionality and content with its cruise liner counterpart.

The client briefed SimpleClick to use our own Content Management System, Doddle, to deliver a multi-site solution which would enable the client’s in-house team to easily and effectively share and administer new content between the separate brands.

• To deliver a new website devoted to the client’s new river cruise offerings
• To utilise our own bespoke CMS, Doddle, to create a multi-site solution which would seamlessly integrate with the website with existing functionality
• To offer a user-friendly experience to the client, enabling them to make easy updates

This project involved the whole SimpleClick team working together in unison.

We wanted to ensure that our multi-site CMS was easy for users to share content between sites such as images, documents, text, FAQs and other media. As we had already used Doddle to build the client’s main website and their travel agent portal, it was easier to introduce a new river cruise website into the mix.

The project had its own unique challenges as the full set of requirements were not known at the outset; however, we were easily able to adapt the system throughout the development phases as new requirements emerged. Our team worked extremely closely with the client, whose in-house team provided the designs. This allowed us to specify, develop and test the new website and back-end functionality at all stages of the process.

During the project, we made significant developments to our own Content Management System, Doddle, which allowed us to support the specific requirements of the river cruise product.

We incorporated a cruise management module which allowed all cruise content to be centrally administered and managed across both the new river cruise site, and the client’s main website. We also worked hard to update and improve various other modules, including the search platform, the secure customer account area and the booking engine.

This allowed the website to fully support the specific requirements of river cruises.

We pulled together as a team to ensure that we met the client’s deadlines. We had a three-month period to develop the project specification, develop, test and launch the new website which needed to coincide with the public launch of the new river cruise products.

Since the initial project launch, we have also made further enhancements to the site to support new requirements.

The new website was officially launched to coincide with the public announcement of the new river cruise product portfolio.

The new site not only provided detailed information about the river cruise products, it also had a search and filter functionality, it was fully integrated with existing customer accounts and had a dedicated booking engine which allowed customers to make an end-to-end booking journey.

Within the site’s first twelve months, it had received more than 370,000 visitors, generating income for the client through the online booking functionality.

• Thanks to the shared CMS, customers are able to manage their ocean and river cruise bookings, book shore tours, make payments and download crucial cruise documents from the booking management system.
• Customers have expressed greater satisfaction at having a central source of information through using a familiar booking engine and account management area.
• The new CMS has significantly reduced time pressures on the in-house team who were able to share content via one central system allowing them to make updates quickly and easily.

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