After 50 years guiding adventurous travelers through the most spectacular rivers and canyons in the West, Western River Expeditions has carefully crafted what we consider to be the best white water rafting vacations in the world.
Western River Expeditions launched their first website in 1999. Many various small-scale improvements were made over the years, but the website was outdated, not mobile friendly, and static (meaning only those with coding knowledge could make changes). While it may have looked great to customers, it needed some vital updates to improve the overall user experience.
Our team set out to build a site that is organized both for the consumer and the website administrators. This was done by utilizing a CMS and GitHub, which allows every code change to be logged and reverted. It was also critical to maintain current search rankings and lower page load speeds.
When the new westernriver.com was launched, we saw almost immediate positive results. The existing search engine rankings were not only maintained but improved due to better usability of the site, a more modern codebase, and better content. New keywords based on our strategy also ranked quickly and performed exceptionally well after the launch. The team of reservation agents felt empowered knowing they can make content changes on their own.
Even after integrating a CMS, adding higher quality/larger images, and video the overall site page load decreased by 20%. Since the site launch overall lead conversions increased by 32%, average order value increased over 9%, and online revenue increased over 16%. Western River made their return on investment within the first year!
We like solving interesting problems with good people. If that sounds like you, we'd love to talk.
