Legacy travel tech issues prompt Melt Content to create dev team

Legacy technology and a lack of in-house expertise among travel clients has prompted sector-specialist marketing agency Melt Content to establish a web development team.

Legacy technology and a lack of in-house expertise among travel clients has prompted sector-specialist marketing agency Melt Content to establish a web development team.

The new team, headed by content and user experience specialist Julie Yeardye will offer a full website design and build service.

She will be supported by head of technology Jon Travers. Both have extensive global digital experience and have produced work for several FTSE 100 companies.

Managing director, Dan Hart, said Melt’s work over the last two years with existing clients has led the agency to understand that existing capabilities are often not up to scratch.

“We’ve delivered a number of tactical search-driven campaigns over the last two years, and in many instances this has started with a technical audit of the client’s website.

“It’s increasingly clear that many platforms are not fit for purpose, and many businesses are hindered by clunky legacy systems.

“Changes seem to be dictated by resource constraints or lengthy iteration cycles rather than commercial priorities. We see a growing need for agile, competitively priced development-services.”

The new development team will be able to offer Melt’s clients mobile responsive websites integrated to third party booking engines, which they say will be competitively priced.

Hart said travel firms of all size, even ones with substantial in-house capabilities, sometimes do not have the resources to create new platforms or marketing campaigns.

He said it was important for those firms to tap into the expertise of a third party expert in areas like best practice as outlined by Google.

“Despite our clients having their own in-house development teams, they don’t have the agility and skill-set to quickly deploy campaign-led development work,” said Hart.

He added there are also nuances in the travel sector that an agency dedicated to the industry will be aware of, and can adapt campaigns and technology to take account of.

“Nuances in travel are extreme, ranging from the breadth of terminology, seasonality awareness and changing commercial pressures – largely reacting to external forces.

“Having a grasp of the sector is an obvious advantage. A core part of the senior team have worked in travel and we understand the demands many of our clients experience.

“The evolvement into development work has been a natural one.

“We tend to start all our campaigns with an overhaul or audit of our client’s website and this invariably needs development work to fix any search issues.

“This leads to creative campaign requirements and the need to think about how content-led activity is delivered within or outside of the constraints of an existing website.

“Such examples could be micro-sites, parallax, or dynamic infographics.

“The larger development work such as re-building or creating a brand new web platform takes a natural step forward when it’s clear that an existing site is prohibiting growth.

“It’s likely that trying to ‘fix’ a legacy site is time-consuming and expensive compared to delivering a brand new platform.”