About two weeks ago, I started ripping apart the backend of the website and system of the Culture Routes Society in Antalya before creating a marketing strategy. For those who just came across the blog, I’ll give you a crash course. I’m in Antalya, Turkey, at the moment helping this NGO, which focuses on maintaining archaeological routes in Turkey. Due to being just swamped with lots of work, the back-end of their system alongside their apps and website have completely been neglected to such extend that the app was collecting negative reviews and some basic functions on the site no longer worked. I am not even going to start about the fact donations are not possible because of multiple reasons. On top of the fact, there was no way to control how many people wanted to make a reservation. Long story short, they are working their asses off but zero cashflow. Let’s change that!
The essentials
First thing I always do before anything else is to check the backup system. In this case, there was none. The last backup made dated back to 2016. The same year, Ariana Grande dropped the lyrical masterpiece “Side by side” which would be dethroned by Fifth Harmony “Work from home” if it wasn’t for corona hitting 2020. We are lucky to be surrounded by such talented artists, right?. Ok, Sasan, stay on track… Soooo after creating a backup-system, I moved further on the security of the organisation, which was easier to set up because that was also non-existent. Things like brute-force attacks, IP blocking, 2FA, stronger passwords, and basically, you know, the basic stuff. I mean, I could go all the way. Still, again I have to prioritize and make a calculated risk assessment regarding the time I have and the possibility of a hack happening to the said organisation. If I were here to assess an organisation that was holding user data on their servers and dealing with a more complex and thus hacker-inviting organisation … i.e., an insurance company, I would clearly approach this very differently. These kind of organisations are more prone to attacks by low-mid level hacking to mostly use it as a slave or malware spreading or just plain fun.
The money maker
The main challenge the organisation was facing is creating different money streams to fund their hard work. Someone has to pay for the lights to stay on, right?. The main way and one of the only way to achieve is through donations. The NGO itself is not a travel agency, but they work with member travel agencies that provide tours. By funnelling visitors’ requests about tours to these agencies, the NGO acts as a facilitator, and the agencies show their gratitude through donations. But 1 big massive, gigantic problem here. There was no way to check this. So I created a separate page for the visitors to land on. They fill in their requests and desires, which in turn was collected in a separate file offloaded on a different secure server online. The admins would then receive a notification about a new request, and they would then forward that request to the relevant travel agency. Their email is also collected (consensually, of course) and kept on a different mail server for newsletter purposes. This method has given them directly several advantages:
- Track how many visitors check out the reservation form
- Keep track of the kind of tours people are interested in
- Collect email for newsletter purposes and offers in the future
- Mitigate between visitors requests and connecting them to the correct agency
- Giving the agencies a direct insight into how helpful the NGO is to their livelihood
- By providing the agencies with sound data, they can donate with more confidence to keep the NGO going.
- Collect valuable feedback from customers
- Multiple languages for both English, Russian and Turkish speaking visitors
User experience is key
I hate forms, I hate filling them out, and I hate them, even more, when I have to make them collect information. Sometimes you can’t avoid this, though, so I will jump through 50 hoops to make this experience as user-friendly as possible. *drum roll please* introducing…. conversational forms. I love conversational forms when the form is a bit longer than a contact form but is not a full-blown survey. They are perfect for this use-case because we want to collect things like when are they planning to come to Turkey, how many people they are travelling with and what routes they want to take. Or things like whether they want to stay in a pension or hotel etc.
Aside from the form, I had to get rid of some eyesore of design decisions made in the past, which I will explain more visually in the case study.
Conversational form guiding the user through the form
Some key parts that stand out:
- smooth transition between inputs
- all other distraction is removed, you don’t see other buttons and texts
- you can clearly see how far you are with the form
- multiple languages
- you can go through the form with either keyboard or mouse
- responsive design , making it looking great on all devices
Social media and content
When it comes to social media and creating content in general, you have to be consistent. ( don’t point fingers at me, I’m trying to write every week here!) But I understand it is a true true pain in the ass when it comes to not only writing or creating content, and it’s also difficult to keep track of every darn platform out there and the next hot thing. I mean, we have shifted our focus from Facebook back in the days to shaking to TikTok tunes(Guilty as charged here). So what I created here for them was a tool that allows them to cross share and cross-post on a different platform at different times and days as they please with recurring post possibilities. At the same time, I created a clear social media strategy to be consistent and share on all platforms throughout the week, every week for the next 6 months. They have to abide by to increase their following and outreach to potential trekking lovers. If they stay on course with this, I am 100% certain they will grow both their visitor count and their following on social platforms. Creating continued content is also very important in the form of blogs, informative and generic writing is always good to keep your target group interested (I promise I will write more informative articles beside my travelling consultancy shenanigans). Next week I will re-assess the progress and finalize my work here leaving them with a solid foundation to continue on!