The Runway Visitor Park (RVP) website is built on the Lotus Domino CMS. We designed and built the site in a very short time-frame to enable the RVP team to showcase the range of things you can do at the park and detail upcoming events.
The booking engine system, is an extension of our bespoke car park booking application, built for Manchester Airports Group. It allows for events to be created (tours) and capacity to be assigned on a per event basis. Reports are sent through daily to the RVP staff with the names of customers booked on specific tours so that the can accurately manage staff resourcing.
User research carried out by ourselves identified two main journeys for booking tickets such as these, both of which are catered for with this system. The first is users wishing to book with a specific tour in mind and the second is users with a specific date in mind but they are less concerned about the tour they go one.
As with any booking engine we create, e-commerce best practice has been applied. We’ve removed the distraction of navigation etc to focus on the users primary goal (making a booking). Field lengths are appropriate to the values they should contain. The basket fixes as the user scrolls so it’s always in view. Security messages are included to gain trust plus a lot more besides.
Persuasive selling techniques are also implemented through the system. For example when tours receive a certain number of bookings a message shows highlighted that there are “only 3 places left” on a specific tour to create urgency.
Tickets are sent to the customer via PDF (or post if they prefer) which are all generated on the fly with specific booking reference numbers. Users can also purchase gift vouchers through the system. The receiver of the vouchers can then use the booking engine to redeem those vouchers when booking their tour.
In short, the system, is extremely robust, flexible and easy-to-use for both users and administrators alike.