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Company: Off Exploring
Project: Off Exploring Travel Journals
Dates: Apr 2007 to Sep 2007
How did the project start?
Originally the Off Exploring website began as the personal travel blog of founder Andrew Ace during his trip around Australia. It has since expanded to become a blogging tool which all travellers can use to keep friends and family updated about their trip, whilst recording a journal of their experiences to look back on in years to come. The aim of the 2007 project was to officially launch the website publicly and introduce integration with social media networks such as Facebook.
What options did you consider?
Early options involved where to host the site, and the choice of platform which it should be built on. Cost and convenience were the two paramount considerations when it was a personal blog being updated from internet cafés across the world. A third-party hosted PHP platform was chosen. Once the site expanded to provide a public service, other measures such as resilience, security and scalability became more important. The site still runs on the latest version of PHP, but is now hosted on our own servers at a Datacentre in Newcastle, in order to cope with the large number of photos and videos uploaded by users to their travel blogs.
What help and expertise did you receive?
Development of Off Exploring is done in-house, by a small team of experienced web developers, working closely with other members of the team from our sister company Ecommnet, a specialist in IT security solutions, operating from the same offices in Horsley, Northumberland. The broad range of skills provides a strong level of experience within the organisation to deliver a high quality & reliable web application to travellers around the world.
Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?
Off Exploring offers the user a number of added-value services by integrating with third party operators and websites. For example, travellers can upload photos and post journal entries via their mobile phone. Updates can automatically be posted on their friends' Facebook profiles. And at the end of the trip, the journal can be converted into a full colour, bound hardback book. Each of these services requires technical integration with external services, either through the use of APIs or by working with the supplier's own developers. This aspect of development has invariably been the most challenging. When planning any integration, we now allow extra time for unforeseen issues that may arise which are outside of our own direct control to resolve.
What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?
There has been a tremendous reaction to the public launch of Off Exploring in September 2007. It received coverage in a number of national publications including Web User, Travel Weekly and Travolution which, coupled with the accompanying launch of our Facebook integration, had the effect of more than doubling the number of weekly signups to the website. The increased traffic provides greater advertising opportunities, drives sales of printed journals, and increases brand awareness. This in turn has led to enquiries from a number of large travel agencies, interested in using our services to add a white-labelled travel blog solution to their own websites.
What are your plans for the future?
As mentioned above, we plan to extend the reach of our service by giving other organisations the opportunity to use our platform to include Web 2.0 functionality on their own websites. This is something which we have already implemented very successfully with STA Travel, the world leaders in travel for students & young people. Licensing the technology, as well as providing a valuable revenue stream for the business, also brings with it fresh ideas for new developments to benefit the growing user base. A number of exciting new features are planned, including automatically plotting where you've been on your trip, and showing photos on a map, using data from your GPS-enabled mobile phone.
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