Communicating a World of opportunities for Adventurers
Active Adventures
United by a powerful belief in the ability of travel to create inspiring, life-changing moments Active Adventures (HQ in Queenstown, New Zealand) and Austin Adventures (HQ in Montana, USA) have come together to create a world of opportunities for global travellers.
We helped them to build a state-of-the-art white label platform to enable their global team to manage both brands within one centralised, robust and efficient platform. For either brand, the UI componentry is consistent & well documented for ease of development implementation.
INSIGHT INTERVIEWS • USER RESEARCH • USER TESTING | UX DESIGN • UI DESIGN • PROTOTYPING • DIGITAL DESIGN SYSTEM • ONGOING SUPPORT
THE OPPORTUNITY
The two websites are essential business assets helping Active & Austin Adventures connect with new leads, generate bookings and communicate their position as a leading global Adventure Tour Group. When the two mighty Adventure Travel companies came together a new brand was developed for each of the companies to better reflect their portfolio and style of tours. And under the hood, a full remodelling of supporting business systems needed to be considered.
For the global marketing team, the two websites needed to reflect the new positioning of each brand, and there was a need to consolidate to make the marketing team more efficient and able to focus on driving leads instead of performing mundane double work.
For IT, there was a strong desire to create a long-term strategy, enabling Active & Austin Adventures to operate efficiently, with shared, unified resources and business systems.
What if we can create one shared platform from which several brands could operate together, reducing cost, and increasing efficiency and platform ROI?
OUR APPROACH
We gathered business needs across the two companies, identifying the key features and design elements that aligned with each brand's unique identity in the discovery phase. In the design phase, we created a cohesive look for the shared platform while still maintaining each brand's distinct identity. In the implementation phase, we used our Agile Development Sprints to develop the new White Label support and ensured seamless integration with surrounding business tools, allowing both companies to operate on the same platform while effectively sharing data.
THE SOLUTION
Building out a comprehensive White Label Design System as a foundation, allowed our design team to design a theme for each brand across the whole user experience of the two sites. Using the latest version of the SilverStripe platform as a foundation, we then created a Multi-site solution supporting both Active, Austin and future brands with the same functionality, under one code base.
WHITE-LABEL DESIGN SYSTEM
We gathered information about the two different brands, defined design elements, created guidelines, tested with users, refined, and implemented the system across two themes. The result was an effective foundational system for creating new brands quickly, maintaining consistent branding and user experience while also providing a long-term design foundation that improves ROI by reducing development costs.
ONE PLATFORM, TWO BRANDS
With the new White Label Web platform and the two new brands in the market, both Active & Austin Adventures can now efficiently market their unique travel tour products individually, as well as cross-sell and draw upon each other's strengths to tailor unique travel experiences for adventurers around the world.
The Results —
Increased ROI
Increased ROI future investments are shared across the two brands. For example, investing in CRO, new payment methods or even adding another brand to the portfolio can be done at a lower cost with the new platform.
Reduced maintenance cost
— with one platform that shares the same resources and code base means the focus can be on adding new business value by improving the platform.
Operationally when both brands are working in the same systems, with the same processes. This leads to reduced training and greater flexibility to work across brands.