Case Studies: Web Services
Please note that we have not identified our client unless given explicit permission to do so.
Making Websites Work For You
Client C takes parties of divers daily to sites in the Weymouth area. As well as charters at the weekend, they operate a midweek ‘dive-taxi’ service to selected sites. We built a website for them to publicize their service which incorporated a booking system for the midweek service.
The site keeps to a simple design, which allows fast loading, carrying pages describing the service, the skippers experience and some photos of the deck area and boats facilities (important to their target market, as divers primary needs are comfort and space for kitting-up). The technical aspects of the site are largely unnoticed by the user, as they should be!
We used PHP, a web programming language, to deliver the dynamic data. For the page describing the midweek dives that are available, the data for the site, depth and leave time are taken from a data file. This file can be modified by the client using a secure page we provided for administration purposes. As a user browses the list they can choose to book one or many dives from any of the published trips. This takes them to a booking form, where they enter their details which, when submitted, generates an email to our client and their customer confirming the provisional booking. Our client can them contact them to confirm spaces are available and arrange to take their deposit.
Future developments include the ability to confirm availability of spaces in real-time. This will require our client to maintain the number of spaces available, but any on-line bookings will automatically decrease the number. In addition, a news page will be added which will allow our client to put up-to-the-minute news on special offers, visibility, etc. via the secure administration page mentioned earlier.
Getting Found On Serach Engines
We have an ongoing commitment to improve Client E's ranking with the Google search engine. They operate in an extremely competitive market, where common search phrases will also overlap a completely unrelated market. We have steadily improved their position and continue to tweak their site. Overnight guarantees are worthless - successfull search engine optimisation takes time.
Nonetheless, for a basket of search phrases, over a period of 3 months we have moved them from 'nowhere' (at least, not in the top 200) to top 20 positions for more than half their chosen search terms. In a few cases we have reached top positions, and we continue to work to gradually increase their ranking throughout.
