Set against the stunning backdrop of Phuket, Thailand, Mia Kai is not just a luxury superyacht; it’s a gateway to unparalleled experiences across the shimmering waters of the Andaman Sea. Each voyage aboard the Mia Kai offers a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, crafting unforgettable memories for its international clientele. In partnership with Mia Kai, Evolut crafted a digital gateway as refined and inviting as the yacht itself, enhancing their online presence to capture the imagination of prospective passengers and seamlessly drive new inquiries. Our collaborative effort has ensured that the essence of Mia Kai’s luxurious offerings is vividly conveyed and easily accessible to the global audience it serves.
Objective
Mia Kai is a successful business, driving repeat business predominantly through local clients due to COVID and recent restrictions on travel. Mia Kai desired to open back up to international trade as a more lucrative source of week-long stays, but knew this would be difficult in the absence of a well-considered website to represent their experience. With a highly wealthy and prestigious target market, the website needed to deliver on the highest levels of luxury as well as bringing Phuket and surrounds to life in a way that fairly represented the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it affords.
Approach
Week-long stays on luxury superyachts are certainly well-considered and (typically) well-researched purchase decisions. We knew the pitch was as much Phuket (Thailand) and surrounds as it was the superyacht itself. Ultimately we had to convince incredibly wealthy patrons to reconsider their trip to the Greek Isles / Mediterranean in favour of a holiday in Thailand… a tough sell until you see what Phuket and surrounds has to offer. By travelling to Thailand and experiencing the Mia Kai experience first-hand, we knew that people simply needed to see the experience for what it was and they would be hooked – so we took the following strategy to help bring this experience to life:
- Bring Phuket and surrounds to life with an interactive map which deep-dived into each destination and allowed visitors to add them to a virtual itinerary / booking
- Use rich video and photography to best represent the experience and all it has to offer across the website
- Help visitors explore all the different activities on offer (a big selling point) and get detailed information to help self-educate
- Go deep on the dining and indulgences experience, a key selling point for the experience
- Group experiences by persona, allowing users to either design their own Perfect Getaway or to browse through Curate Experiences
- Allow visitors to create a virtual itinerary and booking to help shorten the sales cycle and make a better overall experience
They have a great balance of being both commercial and creative. They’ve got the technical expertise but they really go beyond with the mix of both design and commercial understanding so we can really build something that’ll achieve the desired outcome of the business. They worked with us through that. Additionally, we're impressed with their strategy. They didn’t intend to build a site that’d be demolished in a couple of years’ time. Their team is being scalable so they’ll reuse the work that they’ve done previously to build. They don’t have to restart. This shows that they’re being very careful with our money as well. Additionally, we’ve had a great flow in sales. We’ve had $7 million worth of preorders since we went live. This is far exceeding our expectations and targets. The fact that it flowed and worked well without any errors is a win.
Matthew Muller
The team has been amazing to work with. As someone who doesn’t have a solid background in media and communications, they’ve been able to get me through the process. They make things very easy to understand, and they’re agile and responsive to our needs. We’ve had really tight timeframes, and they’ve come up with out-of-the-box, intuitive solutions to offer our stakeholders during COVID. They’ve always been accessible and able to bring me on the journey very quickly, allowing me to understand web development, web design, and why we do things the way we do. They’ve come up with solutions I never would’ve thought of that have been fantastic and absolutely hit the mark.
Robyn Littlewood
Since the launch of our website in February, we have seen it make great gains when it comes to audience figures and attracting quality leads throughout the site. With the digital realm changing everyday, Evolut have been working closely with me and my team on improving the website to better attain and qualify potential leads, always ensuring that the site's mechanics, creative and analytics are kept up to speed with industry standards. I am very pleased with the level of service that I receive from Evolut and their genuine interest in our products and brand.
Helen McCabe
They have a great balance of being both commercial and creative. They’ve got the technical expertise but they really go beyond with the mix of both design and commercial understanding so we can really build something that’ll achieve the desired outcome of the business. They worked with us through that. Additionally, we're impressed with their strategy. They didn’t intend to build a site that’d be demolished in a couple of years’ time. Their team is being scalable so they’ll reuse the work that they’ve done previously to build. They don’t have to restart. This shows that they’re being very careful with our money as well. Additionally, we’ve had a great flow in sales. We’ve had $7 million worth of preorders since we went live. This is far exceeding our expectations and targets. The fact that it flowed and worked well without any errors is a win.
Matthew Muller
The team has been amazing to work with. As someone who doesn’t have a solid background in media and communications, they’ve been able to get me through the process. They make things very easy to understand, and they’re agile and responsive to our needs. We’ve had really tight timeframes, and they’ve come up with out-of-the-box, intuitive solutions to offer our stakeholders during COVID. They’ve always been accessible and able to bring me on the journey very quickly, allowing me to understand web development, web design, and why we do things the way we do. They’ve come up with solutions I never would’ve thought of that have been fantastic and absolutely hit the mark.
Robyn Littlewood
Since the launch of our website in February, we have seen it make great gains when it comes to audience figures and attracting quality leads throughout the site. With the digital realm changing everyday, Evolut have been working closely with me and my team on improving the website to better attain and qualify potential leads, always ensuring that the site's mechanics, creative and analytics are kept up to speed with industry standards. I am very pleased with the level of service that I receive from Evolut and their genuine interest in our products and brand.
Helen McCabe
They have a great balance of being both commercial and creative. They’ve got the technical expertise but they really go beyond with the mix of both design and commercial understanding so we can really build something that’ll achieve the desired outcome of the business. They worked with us through that. Additionally, we're impressed with their strategy. They didn’t intend to build a site that’d be demolished in a couple of years’ time. Their team is being scalable so they’ll reuse the work that they’ve done previously to build. They don’t have to restart. This shows that they’re being very careful with our money as well. Additionally, we’ve had a great flow in sales. We’ve had $7 million worth of preorders since we went live. This is far exceeding our expectations and targets. The fact that it flowed and worked well without any errors is a win.
Matthew Muller
The team has been amazing to work with. As someone who doesn’t have a solid background in media and communications, they’ve been able to get me through the process. They make things very easy to understand, and they’re agile and responsive to our needs. We’ve had really tight timeframes, and they’ve come up with out-of-the-box, intuitive solutions to offer our stakeholders during COVID. They’ve always been accessible and able to bring me on the journey very quickly, allowing me to understand web development, web design, and why we do things the way we do. They’ve come up with solutions I never would’ve thought of that have been fantastic and absolutely hit the mark.
Robyn Littlewood
Since the launch of our website in February, we have seen it make great gains when it comes to audience figures and attracting quality leads throughout the site. With the digital realm changing everyday, Evolut have been working closely with me and my team on improving the website to better attain and qualify potential leads, always ensuring that the site's mechanics, creative and analytics are kept up to speed with industry standards. I am very pleased with the level of service that I receive from Evolut and their genuine interest in our products and brand.
Helen McCabe
The Mia Kai
DSM™ Blueprint
The most important of aspects of Mia Kai’s website are the yacht itself and the Destinations. Arguably, from a website perspective, the destinations are more important as you need to convince people to come to Thailand first. Knowing this we focused on making it easy and engaging to discover new destinations through a rich interactive map.
To show off the Destinations we combined an Interactive Map with a Service/Product Catalogue – not just highlighting destinations but allowing you to “zoom” into them – learning more about them and seeing lovely full-screen imagery, further enticing you to visit.
The Interactive Map allows you to filter Destinations by your interests, such as Diving, Family, Party and more. We also overlaid a video of water in the background to make the Interactive Map feel more realistic and make the whole experience that much more engaging.
Once you’re within a destination you can add it to your Favourites which then helps you to build out a virtual itinerary.
In addition to the Interactive Map is a Destinations page that essentially combines the concepts of a Product Catalogue (Destinations) with Persona Pages (Experiences) and allows users to explore the different destinations in the way that makes most sense to them.
Once landing on Destinations that excite them they can be added to the Favourites list to build out their itinerary. Similarly this can be done for food and drinks – allowing users to configure the details of their trip and share it with friends and the captain when they are ready. This is a handy and time saving feature for capturing and organising new customers.
Of course, the yacht itself is of huge importance, and as a beautiful yacht we wanted to make it as easy to navigate and engage with as possible.
The Yacht page leverages a 3 level interactive map with hotspots which you can interact with to see all of the different rooms and spaces within the Yacht. This helps prospective customers get a strong sense of the yacht experience before they book.