Richard Lennox

It has been a long, hard slog over the last few months at work. I have put in the hours and the effort to produce something that I can happily say I am very proud of. I have been the sole developer for SK Chase since I started over a year ago now.  Throughout that time there has been much functionality that I have added to their existing system that I am proud of, but nothing so visible as www.skchase.com.

When I first started working at Ezone and on SK Chase's project, I was instantly aware of the ambitions of SK Chase.  They did not want to solely be a supplier of the gift voucher application to the hotel and tourism industry, but wanted to produce a site that took the vouchers loaded by the hotel clients into the gift voucher app and sell them through a single portal.  Enter www.skchase.com….

The site originally a simple "About us site" was transformed into a basis for what you see now.  Earlier this year SK Chase put together the design and soft launched a manual sales site. Manually controlled, with every bit of content being entered by hand, and with links to the existing gift voucher catalogues of their customers.  The site was unmanageable, unwieldy and I believe it must have been difficult to use as an end user.

So over the last 2-3 months I have taken their design and rewritten it, to what you see now.  It was a busy and ambitious development cycle, with not a minimal amount of stress, but the end result is what matters.  And I am proud of the end result.  

The site pulls in vouchers from the hotels using SK Chase's application, and categorise them.  I have developed a bespoke search system that allows the categorised vouchers to be fully search-able by type, location, for who and other search aspects. This "search" might not compare with the likes of Google but it is an achievement in itself.

The site then lets you buy multiple vouchers from multiple hotels in one order and deliver them wherever you like.  One thing I am really proud of is incorporating the conceptually two different sites – the hotel catalogue eg at Gleneagles and the SK Chase site – into the same application.  This gives a great experience for a user who is used to purchasing vouchers from a hotel catalogue.  The cart and checkout in particular look and feel and act in the same way – giving returning users the same experience, one which they are accustomed to.

I am particularly proud of my work on making the site Search Engine friendly and optimisable. Having a manually created site there first meant I was always reacting to existing search rankings. I still believe this is the wrong way round, but I developed a solution for even the most dynamic of pages, including the search results page, that allows SK Chase to maintain their positions in the rankings through an effective use of content. While I cannot go into details about the solution, it is something, I think will help SK Chase cement their strong reputation through a good set of search engine rankings.

The site itself from its soft launch at the end of October has been relatively successful, orders are coming through steadily, although not in great quantities as yet.  There has been no advertising other than that of the search engine rankings and it is great news that the number of visitors and buyers is on the increase.

While I am hoping for less manic development cycles in the future I am looking forward to taking both the application and the site itself to new levels in the coming months.  Please do take a look at the site, even if you are not wanting to buy anything….www.skchase.com 

UPDATE: 2008/02/26

Check out their new site launched just before Christmas – www.kisschasegifts.com!