Luxury travel brand site scoops awards

A website designed for a major luxury travel brand by digital design agency Fortune Cookie has cruised to success at two major design awards.

Kuoni's luxury travel brand Voyages Jules Verne (VJV) has received two prestigious awards for excellence in web design.

Earlier this month, VJV and Fortune Cookie celebrated success at the 2008 Travolution Awards, where the luxury travel brand picked up the 'Best User of Technology (Tour Operator)' award.

The Travolution Awards judges (comprised of senior executives from the travel industry chaired by Travolution magazine's editor Kevin May) described the VJV site as: "A very practical and visible execution of brochure technology which has translated well to produce an excellent experience online".

Now VJV has received an Award of Excellence from the British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB) in the 'Best website' category.

Now in their 55th year, the CiB Awards recognise the very best in business communications.

The CiB judges heaped praise on VJV: "A great overall experience; the VJV site has an attractive look and feel with good use of emotive copy and excellent imagery.

"The consistent navigation means you never feel lost".

Commenting on their double success, Adele Hegatry, eBusiness Executive at VJV, said: "Voyages Jules Verne is honoured to be short-listed and affiliated with the high standards set by both Travolution and CiB.

"We always strive to offer a clear and concise website that provides excellent user experiences from research through to purchase.

"These awards recognise our ability to deliver the best in business communications".

Fortune Cookie designed the VJV website including the recent addition of a brochures page to accommodate the introduction of 'Inbro technology', implemented to enable VJV customers to view entire travel brochures online.

Commenting on the awards, Fortune Cookie Managing Director Justin Cooke, said: "Our design ethos is all about building beautiful, findable, accessible, usable websites on time and on budget that deliver fantastic business returns.

"We are truly delighted that our relationship with VJV continues to bring them the awards success that they so richly deserve".

Cooke attributes Fortune Cookie's awards successes to the consistently impressive business returns that sites designed by the company are delivering: "The site we designed for VJV enjoyed a 70 per cent increase in sales (compared to their previous site) virtually overnight.

"We attribute these amazing results to our user-centred design approach".

Cooke continued: "We practise 'experiential design' combined with the latest usability techniques (including eye-tracking) to ensure that the user is always at the heart of our design ethos.

"For customers, their holiday starts with the first click of their mouse; the most effective travel websites build anticipation that will eventually lead to sales, as we have been able to prove categorically with VJV".

As an Award of Excellence winner, the VJV site has been put forward to the shortlist for the Class Winner in the 'Best website' category, the results of which will be announced at the CiB Awards dinner.

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