Sterling Airlines - Allan Helleskov Kleiner

Sterling Airlines had an incredibly successful website. In the FDIM’s (Association of Danish Internet Media) survey called “Danish use of the Internet (2008)” Sterling Airlines’ website was named the 35th largest site and one of most popular e-commerce sites. The website was almost three times more popular than the closest competitor. The site had about 100,000 visitors a day. It generated a revenue of more than 4 billion Danish Kroner per year. At times we managed to raise the conversion rate by 300 per cent. Here are some of the initiatives that helped to make the site so successful.

Design

One of the reasons for the great online success was due to ongoing design improvements. Together with usability the design is important to the visitors. They are important to the UX.

CMS

A website should be easy to work with, easy to update and edit. A user friendly CMS system is important. We decided to change to a more modern CMS to help us beat our competitors. We chose Swedish EPiServer. Besides the strengthening of the business the system also increased job satisfaction throughout the webteam.

Web tracking

If you want to enhance the online business, you need to know what users are doing on the website. Where do they go? How long are they on site? Which page generates the highest revenue? How long in advance do a customers visit the site before buying a ticket? etc., etc. We had great focus on site analysis and used Omniture SiteCatalyst.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing or CRM Marketing were in Sterling equal to newsletters. 2 million people in Scandinavia received a newletter from Sterling Airlines each week. It was versioned for different markets and languages. Content had to be spot on and technology to perform. French Neolane was the system we used to ensure a delivery rate of over 95 per cent. The newsletter was a goldmine and sold for millions week after week. It succeeded for a period to triple sales. We also made a new design to increase revenue.