SeaLink Website &
E-commerce Experience
Time for a website and e-commerce experience refresh
Background
D&Co partnered with SeaLink to transform its website and online booking experience into a simpler, more intuitive and customer-centred e-commerce platform. Combining digital strategy, user experience design, information architecture, prototyping, customer testing and programme management, we helped SeaLink reimagine a critical digital journey while creating a scalable platform for future growth.
D&Co Expertise
Digital Strategy · Customer Experience · UX Design · Information Architecture · Prototyping · User Testing · E-commerce · Programme Management
“Our new website marks a major leap forward for SeaLink. It’s modern, intuitive, and makes booking travel simpler and more seamless for our customers.
D&Co have been a trusted partner throughout, bringing clarity, creativity, and strategic rigour to the project. The result is a platform that allows us to create a more customer-centric online experience and gives us a strong foundation for the next stage of our digital journey”
— Grady Cameron, CEO, SeaLink
The challenge
SeaLink faced several significant challenges with its existing digital infrastructure. Despite notable increases in web traffic, conversion rates had declined, signalling a misalignment between user expectations and site functionality. Additionally, the proprietary digital commerce platform was not able to quickly adapt to the evolving needs of the business, resulting in missed opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
“We’ve been on an incredible journey with SeaLink, from brand strategy and story through to campaigns, activations, and a refreshed identity across fleet, terminals, and their head office. It’s been a blast.
The new website was a natural next step: a long-overdue refresh of the user experience, reimagined as a seamless, customer-first e-commerce platform that unlocks access to the islands and brings the SeaLink brand to life digitally.”
— Russ Douglas, Founder & Principal Strategist, D&Co
Delivering a state-of-the-art e-commerce experience through highly collaborative partnerships and teamwork.
Our solution
D&Co embarked on an extensive year-long transformation programme, strategically designed to deliver a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform. The initiative commenced with a rigorous review and strategy process, including comprehensive statistical analysis, stakeholder interviews, digital partner reviews, competitor benchmarking, an extensive user-experience review and the final strategy. These insights clearly highlighted the booking engine as the key touchpoint impacting customer satisfaction and revenue generation. We presented our strategy to the Board for approval and commenced work on the architecture.
In the Architect phase, we employed the strategic intelligence of Experience.eQ™ to craft a robust site architecture and detailed wireframes, ensuring clarity and seamless navigation across desktop and mobile platforms. Using Figma, we developed interactive prototypes, rigorously validated through EQ driven user testing, ensuring the new design resonated emotionally and functionally with users, significantly enhancing the booking flow.
Our design direction focused heavily on simplicity, speed, and intuitive navigation, applying a ‘Mobile First’ strategy aligned with customer expectations. Kentico CMS was selected for scalability, security, and future-proofing. Technical collaboration was streamlined effectively, with KudosWeb managing the front-end design, CMS and API integrations, while CustomLinc handled backend bookings. Leveraging Experience.eQ™’s IQ and EQ capabilities to develop robust brand voice guidelines we then taught our AI models to fast-track content delivery, ensuring consistency and efficiency throughout the process.
D&Co’s Programme Management team expertly coordinated multiple technical partners and the SeaLink internal team, facilitating smooth integration, comprehensive user acceptance testing (UAT), and ultimately ensuring successful deployment. The resulting frictionless customer journey is already significantly reducing pressure on the call centre, has optimised operational efficiency, and elevated overall customer satisfaction and profitability.
DELIVERABLES
Digital strategy powered by Experience.eQ™
Comprehensive site architecture
UX wireframes and prototyping
Figma-based responsive website design
AI-accelerated content creation
Brand voice guidelines
Rigorous programme management
User acceptance testing
Digital partner co-ordination
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