Content management implementation helps boost airline communication with millions of website visitors

Content management implementation helps boost airline communication with millions of website visitors

European airline easyJet has implemented a content management system (CMS) from provider Sitecore to deliver a dynamic, personalised homepage for each web visitor based on location and user activity, across all of its 19 regional websites.

Sitecore, with its partner True Clarity, began implementation of the CMS late summer 2011 to replace easyJet’s in-house CMS system. The airline wanted to enhance the brand experience for its visitors right from the homepage. It uses Sitecore CMS to act on information available from each web visitor to then show images and content that is helpful and relevant to that visitor, such as flights from local airports.

Managing visitors in real-time

For the first time, the easyJet homepage also shows a selection of real-time prices for flights relevant to the visitor for targeted destinations. This allowed easyJet to highlight great value prices and allows users to click straight through into the booking funnel for these flights.

EasyJet and True Clarity initially introduced the new personalised home page to just 1% of the UK traffic, testing against the standard homepage, and incrementally ramped up traffic to the entire UK and Netherlands homepages by the end of 2011.

An early test for the new Sitecore CMS platform was easyJet’s January sale, which at its peak was handling more than 150,000 page views per hour and with easyJet achieving five sales per second, or the equivalent of two planes per minute.

Both easyJet and True Clarity have now completed homepage personalisation across all 19 easyJet regional websites, in 14 languages – attracting visitors from 221 countries. The ariline now plans to harness the potential of Sitecore’s customer engagement platform (CEP) to develop deeper engagement for each of its tens of millions of customers.

Faster reactions to external factors

James Millett, easyJet head of digital, commented: “For a start, the sheer power of the tool out of the box has transformed the way we can change the site to react quickly to external factors. For example, during the recent wet spell we had a series of ad banners encouraging users to escape the rain – such a simple premise but very difficult to achieve quickly before we implemented Sitecore.

He added: “This power, coupled to the dynamic pricing and the increasing levels of personalisation the site is beginning to offer, means we are able to offer ever-more relevant content to our visitors, which is helping us drive our brand values – easyJet is passionate about making travel easy and affordable.”

Carolyn McCall, easyJet chief executive, stated: “EasyJet is enjoying ‘double-digit’ increase in conversions from homepage to booking engine as a result of website changes and the successful ‘Europe by easyJet’ marketing campaign.”