The Landmark Trust is one of Britain’s leading building conservation charities. It rescues precious pieces of our past and gives them a new life as holiday lets. The charity has 200 historic buildings in its care and welcomes over 70,000 guests every year.
The Landmark Trust engaged Netcel in a long-term partnership to future-proof their digital estate, enhance booking conversion rates, and attract new audiences. Initial deliverables were to migrate and support the existing site, upgrade to the latest version of Episerver, and to develop a mobile-responsive user interface.
Optimising the customer booking experience
Once the site was migrated to AWS, and the core Episerver solution was upgraded to the latest version, the focus turned to addressing the front-end of the website. We knew that by designing a new responsive front-end experience, The Landmark Trust could greatly improve conversion rates which, in turn, would help to justify future investment in digital technology.
Rather than a large-scale redesign, we first recommended quick, smaller scale improvements such as redesigning the header and using Episerver supported solutions to enhance and optimise the customer booking experience.
Enabling members to self-serve online
To enable members to better self-serve online and allow The Landmark Trust’s Booking Office to focus on solving the most complex customer queries, several new functionalities have been added to the site.
- Purchase a membership online – A new Account Area for members was developed to move the offline process of becoming a member, online.
- Redeem gift vouchers online – To alleviate the pressure on Booking Office staff, gift vouchers can now be redeemed against holiday bookings online rather than over the phone.
- Cancel a booking online – New functionality to cancel a booking online was added in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
The improved website saw immediate results in both site performance and conversion rates and the responsive build saw a six-week ROI pay-back:
- 15 per cent improvement in page speed.
- 83 per cent increase in mobile revenue.
- 20 per cent reduction in bounce rate on desktop and 27 per cent reduction on mobile.
- Nine per cent increase in conversion rate.
(Results based on 2016/17 performance vs 2015/16)
“Moving to another Episerver partner seemed a daunting process, but Netcel made the process smooth and stress free. They continue to challenge us as a strategic digital partner, making sure we spend wisely to maximise our investments.” Alice Evans, Marketing Manager at The Landmark Trust.