The Times - Expert Traveller

Experience every corner of the world just the way you like it

Industry

Travel

Location

United Kingdom

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Overview

NewsUK is the largest British publisher and the owner of The Sun, The Sunday Times, and Britain's oldest newspaper with over 200 years long tradition, The Times. As of 2019, both print and digital form of The Times had a monthly reach of more than 10.7 million readers in Great Britain.

Since the sales of printed newspapers are declining, The Times wanted to start a digital business focused on one of the fastest-growing sectors worldwide - traveling.

After a couple of failed collaborations with other digital solutions providers, The Times found Q as the best fit for creating a web application that combines travel articles, recommendations from travel experts, and unique and exclusive offers for traveling worldwide. Q was in charge of all phases of the new product development - discovery, UX & UI design, web app development, SEO, and infrastructure optimization.

What we did

  • UX & UI Design
  • Web App
  • Quality Assurance
  • SEO
  • Infrastructure

Tech stack

  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • WordPress
  • HTML
  • CSS
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Process

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  1. Workshop

    The process started with a week-long design sprint workshop in which the goal was to understand the business objectives, share the knowledge acquired on our previous travel-related projects, and specify what will be developed as an MVP.

    1

  2. Discovery Phase

    In the next step, we defined user stories which helped our visual design and engineering teams start the design and development sprints.

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  3. Agile Design & Development

    The design and development process was divided into 2 weeks sprints with continuous integration and testing on the focus group.

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  4. Ongoing Development & Support

    After the MVP release, we established a dedicated Expert Traveller team that is continuously testing, developing, and improving the app, based on user feedback.

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Challenges

Creating a business solution that will make an impact on a saturated travel market

We started the process with the discovery phase in which we used the know-how from our former projects in the travel industry and collected the data of the current market trends. Aiming to create something new on the market, we combined The Times’ strongest assets, which are experience in travel-related topics in journalism and their reach to millions of potential customers worldwide through their newspapers and portals.

From an idea to the delivery in just a few months

We used a lean and agile approach to create a minimum viable product that is continuously being tested and improved based on user feedback.

Enhancing reach to the digitally connected population

Our marketing and SEO team collaborates closely with the London team to promote this new approach of travel through all NewsUK online and offline channels.

Conclusion

Our responsibility was the whole project’s execution - from the initial idea and the workshop to UX, UI, development, SEO, and infrastructure optimization. The main purpose of the application is to inspire, advise and enable custom and unique travel experiences for users worldwide.

After the initial project launch, Q continues to develop and maintain the application, continuously improving the performance and visibility with a dedicated team of designers, developers, marketing, and SEO experts.

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You continue to impress us SO much. The team’s dynamic, rapid responses, and solutions are just mind-blowing. Your team is a dream to deal with and provides a level of confidence beyond what any of us expected.

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Lana Went, The Times, United Kingdom

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