Case study · Two Fish Charters

Guests now pick their own Dry Tortugas dates

Two Fish Charters runs fishing trips of up to four days. The old site showed a calendar and said to call. Now a guest picks a trip length and an open date right on the page.

Where: Stock Island, FL
What they run: Fishing trips, 12 hours to 4 days
Old site: Separate computer and phone sites
Live in: 4 days

See tortugas-fishing.com

Before and after: the old website, on a phone

Before and after: the website we built, on a phone

Where guests got stuck

The old site told guests to reserve 6 to 24 months out, depending on the season. A guest ready to do that still had no way to book on the site.

Old site:
Look, then call
The calendar page showed busy bars from a Google calendar. It told guests to find a blank date and then call. Nothing on the page could hold that date.
Old site:
Dates here, prices there
Booking calendar and Rates and Booking were two items in a long side menu. A guest went back and forth to match a date to a price.
Old site:
Phones got a different site
Phones went to a separate site. Its first screen was a grey bar with the web address and a menu button: no photo, no phone number and nothing to book with. Words and rate tables ran off the right side of the screen.
Old site:
No padlock on phones
That phone site used a plain http address, the old kind with no padlock. Browsers call that not secure. That's a poor start for a trip that costs thousands.
Old site:
Hard to read and tap
Google's test flagged text that was hard to see and links too small for a thumb. On a computer, the site scored 42 out of 100 for Accessibility. That's how easy a site is to read and use.

The booking page: before — The old page says to read the busy bars and call. The new one has you pick a length, then tap an open date. Booked dates are crossed out.

The booking page: after — The old page says to read the busy bars and call. The new one has you pick a length, then tap an open date. Booked dates are crossed out.

The trip itself: before — The old page opens on rate tables and how to mail a check. The new one opens on a real catch, the price and Book now.

The trip itself: after — The old page opens on rate tables and how to mail a check. The new one opens on a real catch, the price and Book now.

From looking to booking

This is what changed on the way to a booking.

Old site:Find a blank date, then call

New site:Pick a length, tap an open date

A guest who decides at 10 at night can send the request then, and Capt. Yuri confirms it.

Old site:Dates and prices on two pages

New site:Length, price and dates on one page

A group can weigh 3 days against 4 with the prices right there.

Old site:A phone site with nothing to tap

New site:Book now and the phone number on the first screen

A guest on a phone can act right away, with no menu to dig through.

Old site:Rates for multi-day trips only

New site:Full day and overnight trips too

A group with no time for three days now has a trip to pick, January to March.

Old site:Call, or send a contact form

New site:A chat box on the site

A guest with one small question can ask it now and not put it off.

What Google can read now

This is what Google gets from the new site.

Now

tortugas-fishing.com

Two Fish Charters | Dry Tortugas fishing charters

Dry Tortugas fishing charters from Key West. Day, overnight and 3- to 4-day trips for up to 6 anglers aboard the Lauren Jeanne, a 50' catamaran.

Old links still work
Every page in the old menu now sends guests and Google to the right new page. That's called a 301 redirect. A link to the old calendar lands on the new booking page.
Three trips
Full Day, Overnight and Dry Tortugas each have their own page. Each page title names the trip and Key West, the way a guest would search.
Trip details in Google's language
Each trip page lists its prices in code made for Google, called trip schema. His business, address, phone and the waters he fishes are in that code too.
A line under the link
The old phone pages had no description for Google to show. The new site has the one you see above.

Faster, safer and easier to use

PageSpeed is Google's test of a page. The new home page scores 100 on all four tests, on a phone and on a computer. Best Practices, Google's check for safe, up-to-date code, went from 48 to 100 on a phone. Accessibility went from 42 to 100 on a computer. And the main picture on a phone now shows in 1.5 seconds, down from 2.0.

Old site

On a phone

98

Speed

82

Easy to use

48

Best practices

92

SEO

Main picture shows in 2.0 s

On a computer

94

Speed

42

Easy to use

42

Best practices

92

SEO

Main picture shows in 1.2 s

New site

On a phone

100

Speed

100

Easy to use

100

Best practices

100

SEO

Main picture shows in 1.5 s

On a computer

100

Speed

100

Easy to use

100

Best practices

100

SEO

Main picture shows in 0.5 s

Scores from Google’s PageSpeed Insights, home page. They move a few points from run to run.

The extra work

Two jobs went past building a website.

A calendar made for long trips
The booking tool we use stops at 12 hours. His trips run up to four days. He emailed that he wanted guests to see open dates all year, so we built a calendar for long trips. It went live the same day. It reads the Google calendar he already keeps, so he has nothing new to update. It also leaves time to turn the boat around.
His web address looked after
We saw his web address was due to run out on November 27. He turned on auto-renew, and it now runs to November 2027. His settings sat with his old host and changes there wouldn't take, so we moved them and walked him through it on the launch call. His email stayed as it was.