We were initially approached by Karen, the owner, and Alex, the marketing and product development manager, at Contours. As a massively popular contender in the tourism sector, arranging walking holidays throughout the UK for customers across the globe, they already had a well-established web presence and a large custom software backend used daily by their staff team.
They had a couple of problems to deal with—despite it’s beautifully complex backend system and strong following, their website hadn’t been updated in quite some time and needed bringing up to scratch to keep ahead of competitors. Secondly, with a bespoke backend they didn’t have the tech skills inhouse to maintain and extend their database system.
Since first stepping out on our journey with Contours in 2017, we’ve helped them make some significant advances and have grown a good relationship with their team.
Throughout this time we’ve provided regular support and website development, including a full redesign of their website and significant improvements to the custom database platform it’s built upon. All this has paid off for them in numerous ways...
We produced a website that shows their brand and offering in a modern light, that’s more appealing to their target audience, and helps keep them ahead of competitors in their industry.
Working with their team we made the website experience much easier for the customer, making the most of modern technologies, including a responsive layout for smartphone and tablet, and features such as online payments.
We brought the site up to scratch with modern search engine marketing and social media best practices baked in. With a site designed to be more appealing to their target customer, geared for converting incoming browsers into bookers, and the team empowered with more tools for creating marketing assets such as blog posts and landing pages, we’ve been able to maximise the impact of their existing marketing outlay.
With regular purchases on the site, and staff using their cloud-based database system to manage bookings, staying online is business critical. We helped Contours move from substandard hosting to a faster, more robust solution with automated backup procedures, meaning their staff can stay efficient and keep working and their buyers keep buying around the clock.
With the website being so central to their business, we provide access to 24/7 support for critical issues. We also monitor the website so we’re aware and able to resolve any major problems before they cause any detriment. The Contours staff team are able to keep working efficiently with quick response to support queries too.
With a system reliant on personal data, and with the new GDPR data protection rules coming into force, security and compliance was a key requirement. We helped them fully comply with GDPR, remain PCI DSS compliant, and implemented practices to keep all sensitive data minimal, secure and private.
Karen, Alex and the Contours team have benefited from our support and input over the past few years in many ways, including the ability to stay ahead of the curve and adapt their website where needed, and peace of mind that they’re supported and running at full strength at all times.
“Working with Arise has been vital to bringing our aging database and website up to date, ensuring the long-term health of the business.
It’s a particular joy that we don’t have to worry about explaining the same aspect of the business over and over, as tasks given to Arise don’t get passed around a large team of people with only occasional involvement with our project.
Overall we’ve been very happy with the service provided.”