Hebridean Island Cruises

For over three decades, Hebridean Island Cruises have provided loyal customers and first-time guests alike with access to the remote Hebrides and a premium, personalised service via their luxury, small-ship sailings.

Welcoming them aboard in early 2025, discover how BANC optimised Hebridean’s website, user experience and booking journey in more detail below.

“BANC guided us through what was a complex project and helped turn our wish list into a reality. The result is a website looks fantastic, and offers a much-improved experience for our customers and our business. Just as importantly, they understood the Hebridean brand throughout the project, ideally placing them to continue supporting both the website and our wider digital marketing activity.”

RACHEL KEMP, MARKETING MANAGER, HEBRIDEAN ISLAND CRUISES

The challenges Hebridean faced

Hebridean initially approached us with an “out of shape” website that was weighing down the customer journey, slowing up their booking process and negatively impacting their direct revenue.

In particular, the Hebridean team struggled with a hard-to-use CMS page builder which created a complex site structure, iterated on over the years without strict guidelines. Their site was also poorly integrated with a booking system that took users to a separate site, resulting in a disjointed booking experience – and third-party referral fees for Hebridean.

They also felt the website didn’t reflect the aspirational, premium feel of the brand’s ship experience, and wanted a user experience that inspired confidence, reflected luxury and drove direct bookings.

How we approached the solution

We knew we needed to understand more about the Hebridean brand before we could revamp it.

Inviting them to a branding Discovery Day, we were able to investigate their goals, motivations and challenges further.

By unearthing key insights into their mission, competitors and customers, we now had the in-depth data to build the new Hebridean brand on and make key improvements to their website, including:

A premium visual identity, with greater focus on aspirational imagery across their site.
A tone of voice that reflected Hebridean’s caring, informative and passionate personality.
Detailed customer personas for more precise, targeted messaging.
A mission statement that strengthened Hebridean’s purpose, decision-making and on-going activity.

What we built for Hebridean Island Cruises

Through intuitive wireframes and high-fidelity UI, our design team placed a greater focus on usability and conversion. The complex site structure was also greatly simplified; by streamlining how the user navigated the new website, we created a frictionless browsing experience for Hebridean’s customers.

On the development side, the bespoke WordPress website we built for Hebridean delivered a far smoother booking experience. Instead of taking them to a third-party site, the bespoke integrations across Resco, Widgety and WordPress now gave users the ability to check live availability, book directly, make donations and submit special requirements through a seamless on-site experience.

We optimised the website further with Klaviyo integration for greater customer communications support and marketing automation, while Pontoon, our travel data plugin, gave Hebridean greater control over the content management of each of their itineraries.

What we achieved for them

With their new website, Hebridean could now align their digital experience with their premium onboard offering, all while supporting long-term commercial growth, thanks to:

Stronger positioning for direct bookings, helping reduce referral costs.
Increased trust and engagement among a more digitally confident 65+ audience.
Improved operational efficiency, with the online booking experience closely following the sales team process.
A scalable digital platform with modern integrations to support future growth and ongoing marketing activity.

223

call conversions

£12,000

average order cost on site

275

brochure downloads

“A lot went into the project for Hebridean, and I really think it showed us at our best: collaboration across different teams, everyone bringing their expertise to the table, and the vision to bring it all together for the client.”

CHRIS BALME, PRODUCTION LEAD, BANC