A bustling Cayman evening...coffee cups tapping our table glass, grave faces anxiously waiting for the clock to strike escape from the tech room...and we get Jay striding into the office with expression of super-joy and extreme excitement.
Netclues was growing exponentially as a company, and every other day there was a new requirement to cater to. So whenever we witnesses Jay in such a mood, it was apparently something new that he needed to discuss.
It was Cayman Airways this time. And it was something way beyond website. It excited all of us and it was a big job on our hands.
Cayman Airways is possibly the most popular name amongst who fly to Cayman. They were a profit-making unit of business strata, with a huge number of walk in travel bookings and quiet an equal number in advance bookings.
Prior to us working towards their web requirements, Cayman Airways had an already existent website. They however, did not have a proper online booking system in place, as a result of which, almost the entire booking process was manual.
The website was a simple one, basically describing the services. Any new update in the services had to be manually done. Apparently, it was not a very friendly process.
The site was not very SEO friendly as Meta Data was completing missing from the site. The design was not up to the current standards & it also had some flash components which became useless fairly quickly.
The client wanted a fully functional dynamic website, basically set up keeping in mind modern design, easy navigation and compatibility on more devices.
The biggest and most complicated thing to do was to put a smooth flight booking system in place; that, when Cayman Airways did not want an enterprise booking software in its own name. That would mean a third booking party integration with the existent website.
The next day onwards, we put an entire team of managers and web software experts sitting together, planning things out and chalking the journey for the next couple of months. We had to complete every small bit of the project, place it under rigorous testing to proof check for the functional accuracy of the integration.
Long hours to toil, hard work to do!
It took us a span between 3-4 months to put every bit & piece together. We took a phased approach and delivered things in bits. Here is a quick glance at what we did and how we did it.
Since online booking was a real pain with them, and they did not want their own in-built booking solution, we concluded upon taking help from a services of a third party software. Sabre airlines solutions fell in favor. We coded changes in the website so that whenever a visitor wishes to make a reservation online, he could use the reservation form right on the home page...and he would be redirected to the booking facility of Sabre.
Cayman Airways is one of the most primitive and most recited name that we have worked for. After we put things together for their website, online bookings started flowing in with increased frequency.