What a large trekking company website needs

A site with 200 trips is a different job

A trekking company with ten trips can live with a site where each page is built by hand. With more than 200 trips, updating pages individually creates much more work and more places for details to diverge. In June 2023 we wrote the brief for a site that size: over 200 trips and more than 40 other pages. This is what went on the list, and why each item is there.

Trips built from parts, not by hand

The brief requested reusable parts for trip facts, itineraries, maps, dates and prices. Other pages would use the same set of parts.

The brief requested WordPress for the content and Next.js for the pages travellers would see.

Dates and prices that stay true

A large site goes wrong quietly: a departure that has passed still shows, or a price changed in one place and not another. The brief asked for dates that update themselves, and for downloads on each trip.

Payment through a local bank

The brief asked for payment through a local bank, so travellers pay online and the money arrives where the company banks.

Accounts for travellers

Once travellers book, they need somewhere to find what they booked. The brief requested traveller accounts with:

• Their trip details and documents
• Their address and the forms they filled in
• Their activity and notifications
• Emails when something changes

Search and speed from the start

The brief requested titles, descriptions and tags for each page, and separate handling for content that rarely changes.

On an earlier trekking site, in 2021, our speed list read:

• Optimise images automatically on upload where possible
• Remove scripts and styles a page does not use
• Cache through a content delivery network
• Fix every error in the browser console

The target was 90 or more on Google’s PageSpeed test. Agree which pages, device settings and test conditions a target covers, and record the measured result separately from the request.