Landing pages of the newly relaunched WestJetVacations.com
A year ago I was invited to Calgary to participate in a prelaunch preview of the revamped WestJet.com. After the session I was asked if I would be interested in coming back for future previews including that of the WestJet Vacations site. As I was saying yes to the question I realized that I had in fact never even been on the site. That lack of visibility is one of several things that are sure to change now that WestJetVacations.com has been re-launched.
The new WestJetVacations.com is now nestled right into the mother ship – WestJet.com. Given the strong brand image WestJet has it makes perfect sense to merge the two. I am told that this apparent synergy was not just conjecture and that a study of traffic to the sites showed that most visitors to the vacations site only got there after a visit to the main site. Fewer clicks to conversion can only be a good thing. Given its new surroundings it should come as no surprise that the look and feel of the new site exactly match that of WestJet.com – uncluttered, easy to read and easy to navigate.
While a less ambitious outfit might have been happy with just the above, the folks at WestJet wanted to go bigger. And they did. Several thousand pages bigger in fact. A key component of the newly launched site is a crowd sourcing-based review system. Guests can submit written reviews and multimedia detailing the ins and outs of their stays at resorts and hotels booked though WestJetVacations.com. The logic is simple; more in situ content, more user retention, more bookings. Obviously for this play to work the site needs to reach a critical mass of content to keep users interested. To get there more quickly the site is already cross-populated with reviews submitted to Trip Advisor. To grow this further, WestJet plans to incentivize its guests to submit their own reviews with a view to hitting that critical mass sooner rather than later.
Beyond the massive changes listed above there are some smaller additions on the horizon, including some interesting social media tie-ins. I’ll be watching with interest to see these take shape and so should you. In fact, while you’re watching, book me a trip somewhere nice; window seat, waterfront view, adults only. Go!
Some snaps of the new site:
