The Challenge
New Zealand’s travel demands are increasing. To meet demand, Auckland Airport knew its website experience needed to improve. The plan was to create a user-friendly online experience that supported people’s travel journeys.
The five main focus areas for improvement were:
• New customer-verified parking and Emperor Lounge booking processes
• Creation of personal profiles for saving/tracking flights and to view existing parking and lounge bookings
• A mobile optimised experience delivered through a responsive web design
• Improving the duty- and tax-free shopping experience
• Simplifying navigational flow and the site structure.
The Datacom Difference
Building on the partnership that delivered the award-winning foundation website in 2008, Auckland Airport engaged Datacom to assist in creating an enhanced innovative site reflective of its digital and branding strategy.
WhyBin\TBWA developed the new website design, in consultation with customers, before passing over to Datacom to create the functional and technical specifications. Datacom delivered a full Sitecore-based development, build and support solution with integration to flight, parking and lounge systems with Microsoft Dynamics CRM enhancements to provide a personalised conversation based on customer activity.
The application architecture was deployed across geographically diverse Azure data-centre nodes to deliver the high availability and scalability requirements. This deployed Azure pattern won the “Cloud Platform” category at the annual Microsoft Partner awards.
The Auckland Airport Marketing and Technology arms worked in close collaboration with the Datacom delivery teams throughout the process. The often rapidly changing environment required Datacom to be nimble and responsive as the project progressed. The end result was an elegant and intuitive website that enables a more personalised and intuitive customer experience while also providing a platform against which future initiatives can be leveraged.
Technology deployed included Sitecore Experience Platform, Microsoft Biztalk Integration Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Results
An award-winning platform delivering improvements across Auckland Airport’s digital channels. Taking the five months since website launch (compared to same period last year), the results have shown:
• Increased traffic across enhanced website channels (9% increase in sessions; 19% increase in mobile traffic)
• More persistent online engagement (9% reduction in bounce rate)
• Positive contribution to bottom-line profitability (6% growth in parking transactions with a 4% growth in overall revenue).
"The end result was an elegant and intuitive website that enables a more personalised customer experience,
while also providing a platform against which future initiatives can be leveraged."