Virgin Atlantic

Now based at both London’s Gatwick and Heathrow airports it operates long haul services to 26 destinations worldwide as far apart as Las Vegas and Shanghai. Virgin Atlantic currently has a fleet of 32 aircraft which includes thirteen 747s, nine A340-300s and ten A340-600s.

Virgin Atlantic has enjoyed huge popularity, winning top business, consumer and trade awards from around the world. The airline has pioneered a range of innovations setting new standards of service, which its competitors have subsequently sought to follow. Despite Virgin Atlantic’s growth the service still remains customer driven with an emphasis on value for money, quality, fun and innovation.

With more consumers booking flights and holidays online, Virgin Atlantic identified the need to have a Web site that was accessible with intuitive navigation. It wanted to steer away from being dependent on developers to update the site by bringing back control of the Web site to the business units that owned and created the content. With an E-Commerce team of six, led by Head of E-Commerce Brian Beirne, already in place, Virgin chose systems integrator Conchango to redesign the site and advise in the selection process for a Content Management solution [CMS].

After a thorough evaluation process comparing four different CMS vendors, SDL Tridion was selected. It was chosen due to its ease of use for business users, its advanced BluePrinting technology, its workflow process and the fact that it could seamlessly integrate with back-office systems like the Runway booking engine that Virgin was already using. By implementing SDL Tridion, the team felt that Virgin’s brand values and accessibility guidelines could easily be translated and enforced online through the use of templates.

Today, there are eleven different regional versions of the Web site: UK, USA, Australia, Caribbean, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa and UAE. Each has its own home page and a navigation bar on the left that allows the user to navigate to a dozen different topics. From searching flight schedules or making bookings online, to finding out all about the in-flight services or finding out information about the frequent flyer program and holiday package deals, a user can now find out practically everything that in the past they would have had to have spent a long time holding on a telephone to get.

“As we are a small airline, it pushes us to use the Web for more of everything.” explains Beirne. "Our business units want to be able to update their own content and have it published to the site in as near real time as possible."

Most business units work directly in the Content Manager. It is now easy for them to make microsites, which are part of the main site technically, but may have a different look and feel.

For images there is now a central repository of pictures that the business units can access and select to accompany the content. Users are able to access and use any of hundreds of images and quickly add these visuals to promotions. The same pictures may be used in different parts of the site.

Content is uploaded to the site once it has gone through workflow stages for approval. Administration rights to publish to the live site are kept in the E-Commerce department though the individual units can preview their work on a staging environment to double check the content that they want to publish. Before implementing the CMS, there was a fortnightly release cycle which meant that any requested changes may have taken up to 13 days to implement. Now the speed to market of any changes is as soon as the content is ready and approved, which means it is posted on the Web site in as near to real time as possible.

The E-Commerce team is currently working on a project to translate the site into simplified Chinese and Cantonese, with plans further down the line to add Japanese, Hindi, and Spanish. This is where SDL Tridion’s BluePrinting technology and localisation becomes advantageous for users to minimise any duplication of content.

Generally on these different language versions of the main site, content will be inherited from the parent to child site though it will be necessary to adapt and of course translate the content for local use. For example, customer rights in the event of delay will need a Chinese version. There will be some form of modified workflow to manage the translated sites; however there will be more flexibility in making the content live as it will need to be in the control of the local specialists who have the knowledge of the language and local market.

Success of the Web site

Beirne says: “Overall the sites equate to about 23,000 pages, as there are 11 regions with more than 200 pages per region. Some pages have 30 or more variants depending on what links a user clicks on and whether they have logged into their frequent flyer account or not. The site has substantially grown, but although support and maintenance is no less than it was three years ago, it would be significantly more if there was no CMS in place.

“Last year, the number of flight bookings grew 65 percent over the previous year, and this year we expect the same level of growth.  Tridion has significantly contributed to cost effectively managing the growth of the site and enforcing our brand and accessibility guidelines, and we are constantly striving to enhance and improve the site,” Beirne concludes.

Business Drivers:

• To bring back control of the Web site to the business units that own and create the content. 

• The site conforms to Internet accessibility standards.

• To keep a consistent look and feel.

• Allow for cost-effective growth 

• To translate Virgin’s brand values online.