Lifting the lid on Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook has been quiet for a while so we were excited at the prospect of catching up on all things online.

Russell Gould has been in the e-commerce director chair for not quite a year and has already brought many a Mytravel experience to Cooks.

Thomascook.com has been revamped and relaunched focusing on four customer segments:

• Those that know exactly what they want
• Those that are browsing for deals
• Those that are just browsing to see what's around
• Those who don't have a clue what they want

Like the work MyTravel has carried out on its sites in the past three years it was a three-stage approach focused on getting basics right in order to improve conversion. The stages were -improving the search and booking technology, navigation and design and the content.

The new Cook's site also moved to the three column approach with deals on the left, inspiration in the middle and the search function on the right.

In short, everything is slicker, speedier and much more thought out.

Surprisingly, prior to this project Thomas Cook redesigns had been based on opinions!

As always, Cooks are tightlipped when it comes to numbers so Russell couldn't say much but the following suggests he is pleased:

Since going live we have had record day on record day. When we did this for MyTravel, on each of four projects we saw in excess of 15% improvement in conversion. Thomas Cook has been greater than that.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution