M&D's - Too much fun for just one website
How do you represent, on a Website, an attraction that includes a theme park set in a beautiful country park, over 40 major rides from a big wheel to the big thrill, an indoor family entertainment complex, an indoor tropical rainforest, and many different eating facilities? That was the challenge that the M&D Group presented to ts.com’s Creative team.
The Strathclyde Country Park is the beautiful setting for M&D’s, Scotland’s Theme Park, part of the M&D Group which also includes Amazonia, Scotland’s only indoor rain forest. Over the recent years M&D’s has developed into a major family entertainment venue who can now boast that they offer ‘too much fun for just one day’.
A fresh eyes view required
M&D’s have offered customers the opportunity to purchase tickets in advance from their Website for some time and online sales were growing, but they were concerned that the site was not visually showing a true representation of all the different activities and facilities on offer for all the family at the attraction.
Sharon Luxton, Sales and Marketing Director at M&D’s explains ‘Often people were visiting M&D’s without knowing before hand what was on offer for them to enjoy. We want people to come here with fresh eyes and discover the variety of entertainment that we have to offer the whole family for a complete day out. Our Website is a vital part of that process, but in its old format it wasn’t working for us, it was hard to navigate through, and difficult for us to update and manage the content’.
Research, vision and design
The challenge was handed to ts.com’s Creative team who conducted an initial analysis of the existing Website. They then worked with M&D’s to research their target market and get a clear vision of the audience that the Website needed to appeal to. Paul Evans, Senior Creative Designer at ts.com commented, ‘We identified the needs of the target audience for M&D’s and greatly simplified their Website, breaking down the home page into sections to appeal to the different audience groups and simplifying the menu structure’.
Paul continues ‘We then looked at the design with an overall focus on the wide variety of attractions at M&D. The site header, which appears on every page, was designed to pick up on the setting, the countryside of Scotland and the fun theme park element of the site using flash animation. The rest of the site is broken down into clear sections which have been designed to visually illustrate all the facilities on offer at M&D’s, enabling their customers to easily find all the information they need to plan their visit.’
Early Successes
Giving customers the opportunity to purchase advance tickets has also been incorporated into the design of the new Website, with ‘Buy Tickets’ buttons placed prominently on each page to drive visitors to book in advance. And the success of this is already being realised; ‘We have already seen a 50% increase in Web sales for one of our regular Autumn events,’ commented Sharon. ‘Anyone visiting our Website now has access to special offers and promotions that can only be found on online, giving them more incentive than ever to book tickets in advance, and all linked simply to the ts.com ticketing system.’
‘Importantly, we hare also doubled the amount of enquiries received from the Website and are receiving many different types of enquiries, such as corporate bookings, since the new site was launched’
Technical aspects covered
One of the most important aspects of the Website for M&D was the ability to easily update their new site, which has been achieved through the use of a Content Management System that they can simply manage. Other important aspects of design have been covered by the ts.com Creative team; including making the site search engine optimised using more text, fewer graphics and key words high up on each page, and designing it to meet W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, level AA.
Sharon concludes "We are delighted with the support that ts.com have given us, they are so attentive and make it so easy. From providing our online advance sales capability to designing our new Website that really gives people the chance to see how much we have grown and shows off all the great attractions we have to offer".
Click onto www.scotlandsthemepark.com to see it for yourself!
Solution : ts Web
Service : Creative
The customer
M&D Group owners of M&D’s Scotland’s Theme Park and Amazonia, Scotland’s only indoor rainforest. M&D Group are a customer of ts.com for advance ticketing through their website.
The challenge
M&D wanted to open people’s eyes to show on their Website that they offer more than just a theme park; including showing off their setting and other facilities which the existing website didn’t visually show. They wanted to build their brand image and broaden the appeal of M&D’s to a new audience and overall to increase revenues from advance ticket sales from their Website. Also to have a Website that was easy to update and manage.
The solution
ts.com’s Creative team conducted initial analysis of the site. They planned a clear vision of the target audience for the site and designed the content to appeal to this audience’s needs. Focusing on the wider attractions on offer they designed a header for the site which picked up on the setting of M&D’s. The site displays the different elements of fun to be had for all the audience groups and clearly shows all the facilities on offer, maximising ticket purchase opportunities.
The result
The M&D’s Web site is content managed and linked directly to their ticketing system with 3 or 4 clickable areas to purchase on each page. Web sales for the first event to go on sale after the new site launched increased by 50% and enquiries to the site for corporate events have doubled.