Case Study: Dolphin Fleet Whalewatch

Overview
The Dolphin Fleet, Provincetown, MA, originated the concept of whale watching as a commercial endeavor in 1975 when it began daily trips to Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary, the center of the whale feeding grounds in Massachusetts Bay. Steve Milliken, owner of The Dolphin Fleet, needed a site befitting a world-renowned business that would serve a multitude of purposes, commercial, informational, scientific. This was the challenge presented to KISS.

Design
A clear and consistent navigation scheme was developed utilizing a different color combination for each section to create both a sense of motion/dynamics and to lend a sense of importance to each one. Different fonts were employed to further distinguish among the site's various sections.

Content Development & Production
The Dolphin Fleet has an enormous and amazing portfolio of photographs from its 30,000-plus trips made since 1975, and multiple image randomizers were used on the home page to rotate a vast series of these photos both passenger provided and professionally shot. KISS produced fresh copy for each of the site's sections to present the voluminous information The Dolphin Fleet maintains about whales and its nearly 30 years of trips.

E-Commerce Functionality & Programming
Several systems were developed specifically for the site, each addressing a different need. The first was a ticket sales machine to allow for online booking of and payment for whale watching trips. Each page was customized to make the booking process easy, clear and quick. Additional functionality, all developed and built by KISS, included a database of Cape Cod dining and accommodations listings that is easily managed/edited/updated in a password-protected back end; a passenger-provided photo upload system ; and the blog/RSS feed for the daily sitings and Naturalists report.

Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization
KISS produced copy that is keyword-rich to facilitate search engine indexing. Additionally, the establishment of a blog for the daily sitings reports and the Naturalist reports, and the excerpt feeds to the site's home page, doubled that indexable copy and KISS knows this has resulted in high organic rank positions for all keywords relating to whales, thus increasing site traffic and ticket sales.

Results
The functionality KISS developed for The Dolphin Fleet, integrated smoothly into the site design and production, organizes the heavy volume of whale and whale-watching resources clearly for the visitor. The ticket system enables customers to book their whale watching trips and pay for their tickets online at the same time they are booking their vacations on Cape Cod. Site traffic has increased steadily from year to year now, and online ticket sales have increased each summer for the past five years.

KISS was able to balance these varied interests – commerce, science, local resources and kids fun - - , nicely and effectively. The result is an easily navigable web site with clear calls to action for every visitor, no matter the purpose of the visit.