Brief
As inventors of the ‘luxury hideaway resorts’ concept, now so widely emulated by others, Aman has always been the setter of high standards. When it came to redesigning its suite of 19 websites, Aman naturally sought out the best advice.
After a global search, Nucleus was selected in late 2006 and we set about a complete transformation of their web presence. Our brief was to create a new benchmark in luxury resort websites which started a relationship that lasted a decade.
Solution
First, we defined Aman’s detailed requirements followed by a ‘global’ content architecture and navigational schema. Once approved, we designed a stylish user interface that infuses the user experience with rich imagery of their staggeringly beautiful properties.
Individual resorts conforms to the design, but are personalised with emotive content and discrete branding. We used advanced compression techniques to enable very large photographs to be used – a first, now widely copied. The design is sleek and simple; less can be more, when you know how.
We also created a new technical platform, based around Ektron CMS 400, and a highly customised online booking system based on Fidelio. The latter combined availability and prices from the PMS with rich content from the CMS, while disciplined use of AJAX enhances the user experience. SEO was tuned and deployed to intercept general location searches. In 2012 we introduced SynXis as the online booking engine to replace Fidelio.
Results
Following the launch of the new Aman websites in August 2007, the websites delivered traffic and booking growth well ahead of expectations. The portal and resort websites grew to 27 and were subject to continuous enhancements for a decade. The websites won many awards before being replaced when new owners changed the brand’s direction in 2016.