Market leader and in a software Lock-in, Secretplaces needed to redesign and develop from scratch their own website and system concept, in order to be able to improve and bring their business to the level they wanted.
A great challenge, since besides having to use their current data (over 700 hotels), we had to replicate and improve the current website functionalities.
Besides the new layout, design and functionalities, we also focused on SEO (which before wasn't very good, but due to having great content, it still allowed Secretplaces to be placed at top positions on all major search engines), and are now getting even better results, placements and also for keywords they weren't (well) positioned before.
One of the most complex parts of this project was (and is) actually the signup process for Hotels, because they are usually invited (though they can now suggest themselves or be suggested by people), but still go through a very thorough process to get into the Secretplaces' listing. Also, they have to provide a lot of information and we had to make it in a way so it worked quickly without any glitches and also being easy to understand, because the people filling that form aren't usually the most computer-knowledgeable people (no harm intended).
Sadly, since the booking system is still to be developed, they're using their current one (that used to also dynamically generate their static website), so there are some very important screens that have to use iframes.
Most information you see on both sides of the website is always specifially adapted and related to what you're seeing (being it a search results list, a map for a country/region/province/city, travelogue, a specific hotel, etc.), a bit like 1-to-1 marketing.
Since Secretplaces also focus on 3 main markets (English/Global, Germany and Spain), it's been very important that everything is translated (even to more languages like Italian, French, Portuguese, etc.), not only the places names, but also the URLs, so Google can like it even more and rank the places properly per region.
A sitemap generator had to run for over 40 hours to get a complete sitemap for the .com... that says a bit :)
Also, since they've got a very decent amount of visits, the database, webserver and bookings system are in different servers, which was also fun to handle, specially because two are Linux (Debian, our server distro of choice) and one is Windows (not our fault!).
We could tell you so much more stuff about this awesome project, but then it'd probably become boring for you. This way you get the essential.
