Case Studies > Major Marine Tours

Major Marine Tours, A Travel Industry Website Case Study

A new professional, vibrant website was just the ticket for Major Marine Tours. This design brought a boost in sales, brand affinity, and return visits.

The Challenge

Major Marine is a diverse and growing organization needing a website platform which can grow with the organization without requiring commensurate organizational increases in web design or development skills. The site is maintained totally by management and employees (usually just one webmaster with occasional backup). Major Marine staff was interested in ascertaining whether there are approaches to design, operation and maintenance that would:

1. Permit the site to be operated and maintained by a small team of part-time webmasters without a substantial investment and training in desktop software.

2. Allow more state of the art features such as blogs, RSS feeds for some pages, and reservation engine, in the event that the organization would find these of value.

3. Maintain and enhance current search engine positioning targeting key lead generating sources.

Facilitate easier design, operation and maintenance of the website while attaining and maintaining a superior position in search engines and travel sites. Presumed required is a content management strategy that will allow Major Marine to easily distribute content using Major Marine including website, a highly credible blog, and coordinated social media properties.

The Solution

Major Marine came to Alpine and asked for a solution to these three major issues. Alpine recommended the development of a new site, starting with content and information infrastructure from the current Major Marine site, but with updated branding, original graphic design elements, new photography, and layout.  The entire site would be unified on the WordPress platform. Reviewing 17 different design concepts, Major Marine was able to zero in on their favorite concepts within two weeks.  Deciding quickly, Alpine installed WordPress, a temporary theme, and started content migration immediately, importing their existing blog, importing images, and organizing pages, documents, and menus. Simultaneously, Alpine's coders started on the custom theme, working through such issues as cross-platform compatibility and mobile responsiveness. Two weeks later both design code and content converged to deliver the site framework to the client, then provide launch assistance as the team worked through final integration issues.

The Result

Major Marine is delighted with the new look, the new platform, and the new flexibility.  Search Engine reputation has been strongly supported by the new site. The Alpine Platform is key to Major Marine's forward looking strategy - with complete and open layout tools, it can easily build next generation content.  Using Alpine's visual layout editor, their web managers can easily create compelling descriptions of their tours, offer to book tours, converting visitors to customers in-place.

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About Major Marine Tours

Major Marine Tours is an award-winning, family-owned Alaska business with over 30 years in the day-cruising industry. Major Marine tours has been recognized as industry leaders for pioneering programs such as onboard National Park Rangers as interpreters and offering passengers reserved indoor seating on every cruise. Major Marine Tours are the first and the only operators to offer an Alaska salmon and prime rib meal freshly prepared onboard, which has been consistently rated the best of any day cruise company in Alaska. Their awards have included “Kenai Fjords National Park Partner of the Year,” “Kenai Peninsula Outstanding Business in Tourism,” and the Visit Anchorage “Member of the Year” Seymour Award. Most recently, their customers awarded us the “2014 Certificate of Excellence” on TripAdvisor.

Major Marine Tours

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