Case Study
The Client
 Click4holidayhomes.com is a property portal
website advertising a wide selection of privately-owned holiday properties
covering popular destinations worldwide. Unlike estate agents and travel
agents, Click4holidayhomes.com puts users directly in touch with the owners of
these properties thus cutting out the added cost and inconvenience of a middle
man.
The Challenge
Click4holidayhomes.com wanted to fill a space in a fragmented market place by
setting new standards of quality and service. They aim to be the number one
choice for holiday villas and holiday homes to rent. In essence a ‘one stop
shop’ for both holiday makers and holiday home owners.
To accomplish this they needed to drive huge volumes of traffic to the website,
via both online and offline initiatives. One of the key requirements to achieve
this is to consistently rank highly in all the major Internet search engines.
The website also needs to encourage repeat business usage and referrals.
The website needed to be very user friendly and accessible as it will be
catering for the needs of holiday makers and holiday home owners from around
the world. The users accessing the website will have varying degrees of
computer and Internet literacy and they will be using various different
operating systems and browsers.
Click4holidayhomes.com asked Pin Digital to help them address these challenges
and to assist them in their ambition to be the number one holiday home website
on the Internet.
The Solution
 Pin Digital set-out out by creating an
identity for click4holidayhomes.com. This included the creation of a new logo
followed by the design of a clean, logical and easy to use homepage and design
template for the new website.
To help with usability Pin Digital created the website following the simple
three click rule. This meant that wherever possible all the properties
displayed on the website should be reachable within three clicks of the mouse.
To aid this, the new layout was specifically designed to allow users to start
the search for a property directly from the homepage.
The website was built to make use of the latest technology including ASP.NET,
XML and SQL server. The choice of technology helped to ensure a feature filled,
yet easy to use website for holiday makers and advertisers alike, as well as
optimising the website for speed, compatibility and ease of use.
Pin Digital developed a bespoke administration system to allow property owners
to easily add and edit their properties. The system enables property owners
with differing levels of technical ability to self manage their adverts with
little or no input required from click4holidayhomes.com. As part of the
administration system, Pin Digital developed an image upload facility to allow
users to upload their own pictures to the website, in any format, size or
quality. The system then automatically resizes and formats these pictures
before displaying the fully optimised images on the property owner’s individual
web page.
The advanced search facility on the website allows the processing of thousands
of database entries within a fraction of a second, thus enabling users to
perform complex searches based upon multiple criteria such as available date
ranges, specific facilities, activities and locations.
To ensure the website was fully optimised for the search engines, Pin Digital
implemented a full search engine optimisation campaign. Initially this meant
the new website had to be built from the ground-up using search engine friendly
code. Pin Digital then submitted the website to a number of key search engines
and directories and embarked on a campaign to build the websites link
popularity. Pin Digital undertook an accessibility and usability study of the
website to ensure it meet all the requirements specified.
Click4holidayhomes.com also asked Pin Digital to help them manage their drive
for new customers. This included the creation of a Customer Relationship
Management System. Click4holidayhomes.com pride themselves on being one of the
few companies in their field that offer real live customer service over the
phone with a ‘human being’ as opposed to distant e-mail support.
Their CRM database tracks correspondence with each individual customer allowing
Click4holidayhomes.com to offer a more professional and personal service which
in turn helps client acquisition and retention.
The Bottom Line
The number of visitors to the website and the number of page views have grown
significantly month on month since the launch of click4holidayhomes.com, as too
has the number of property owners advertising on the website.
The website is steadily creeping up the search engine rankings and as such
enquiries to property owners is also increasing.
Click4holidayhomes.com has already been independently ranked in the top 1% of
the most popular websites on the Internet by Alexa, the website traffic
rankings company owned by Amazon.com, adding yet further proof that this
website is set to become a huge online success story.
Here is what some of the users of click4hoildayhomes.com have to say:
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We are advertising on many sites and are really pleased with the results from
yours. From the enquiries you have generated so far we have received two
bookings and one very probable booking. The layout and editing features are
also great and very easy to use. Thank you for a great site, we will definitely
be renewing our subscription.
Sarah Elder |
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I will recommend your website as we have had several enquiries that resulted in
a booking, unlike some that we are represented on, and the web site has a nice
clean feel to it.
Christine |
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We have added the details of our apartments in Cyprus and Switzerland. It was
so easy and quick to do! Very user friendly, it updated immediately and there
was no need to worry about the size of my pictures. I’m sure I'll be full in no
time!
Rosie & Clare |
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Project Specification
| COMPANY: |
Click4holidayhomes.com Ltd |
| SECTOR: |
Travel & Leisure |
| THE SOLUTION: |
Property Portal Website Development
Search Engine Optimisation
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| URL: |
www.click4holidayhomes.com |
| TECHNOLOGY: |
Windows 2000 server
ASP.NET
SQL Server
XML
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