Alton Towers Resort is one of the UK's well established theme parks, based in the grounds of a country estate in Staffordshire. Part of the Merlin Entertainments Group, Alton Towers has developed beyond a traditional theme park over the past 37 years; it now offers a water park, 3 hotels as well as offering tree top adventures, woodland lodges, a spa, golf and conference facilities. 

Alton Towers has a range of events running throughout the year, including Scarefest, where the theme park is open over October evenings with specialty mazes which add that extra scare factor to visitors.

CTI Digital initially worked through Alton Towers Resort’s backlog of business critical updates to the Umbraco website, which were required for season opening in March. Working with our team across our Continual Development stream meant that we provided monthly sprints, where key work was prioritised and delivered every 3 weeks.

As with any seasonal business, there were challenges to deliver to deadlines for park opening. We also ensured that we helped to continually improve the website journey for a range of audiences, whether they were looking to book theme park tickets, waterpark tickets, book short breaks and find out information about rides, opening times and events. 

Within the first few months of our continual development process with Alton Towers Resort, we conducted an SEO audit, which highlighted that the main navigation menu could benefit from some changes in structure, based on most popular pages and current user navigation paths.

This lead to an in-depth review of the navigation, to lead users through key journeys, such as short breaks, theme park tickets and information on rides and opening times. Improvements were delivered in the very same month.

Alton Towers Resort saw a 56% YoY increase in mobile traffic. Mobile now accounts for 70% of all sessions on the website. 

Considering this, our mindset to approaching any work on the website has to be truly mobile-first, from our wireframing and design concepts to final testing. 

Alton Towers Resort has an extensive offering in terms of accomodation, With the Alton Towers Hotel, Splash Landings Hotel, Cbeebies Land Hotel, Enchanted Village woodland lodges and luxury treehouses, as well as the stargazing pods. There are almost 600 rooms and 55 different themes to choose from. 

Having a clear customer journey was important, helping potential short break visitors to find the best room for their stay. As a result, we implemented an updated short breaks landing page, using research from the industry and best practice to inform our approach. 

This page helps users to see the key benefits of each hotel and the enhanced themed rooms listing page allows users to find the perfect room for their stay. We also implemented improved individual listing pages, which clearly show the room facilities, photos, 360-degree video tours and other hotel amenities available, such as restaurants and spa, golf and other adventures.

We implemented an updated design to the opening times page. As Alton Towers Resort has multiple attractions, operating under various opening times, we needed a clear way to communicate to users what times the Theme Park was open, as well as the Water Park and other activities. A concise page, with interactive calendar modules, delivered this.

By working in an agile way with Alton Towers Resort, to help plan continual improvements to their existing site, we have managed to implement a wide range of improvements across priority business areas on the website. This resulted in CTI Digital continuing to work with Alton Towers across more projects including SEALIFE, Thorpe Park and an SEO project to name a few.

36%
Increase in sessions Year on Year

56%  
Increase in Mobile traffic Year on Year

70%
Of all sessions were mobile in 2017

+0.5%
Increase in conversion rate