Revolutionizing Luxury Cruising: How Storyly Enhanced Virgin Voyages' Merchandising Strategy

Virgin Voyages is an award-winning travel brand founded by Sir Richard Branson. Offering premium, exclusively adult getaways on the high seas, the brand is on a mission to elevate traditional cruising with its innovative and experiential approach to design, dining, entertainment and wellness. Named the No. 1 mega-ship ocean cruise line in Travel + Leisure’s 2023 World’s Best Awards, Virgin Voyages offers an immersive and unforgettable escape to some of the world’s most irresistible destinations. As a brand at the forefront of technological innovation, the entire end-to-end experience is largely guided by the brand’s website and Sailor App.

Challenge 1: Merchandising the services on web

Despite having an array of outstanding services, Virgin Voyages faced the challenge of effectively merchandising its offerings online. The team needed a solution that could captivate their audience's attention and optimize the online customer journey.

Challenge 2: Complexity of their website

Virgin Voyages sought out a captivating digital experience that would encourage travelers to book and explore information on its services. As a new brand, however, the company looked for ways to improve user retention, realizing that the website wasn’t simple enough for Sailors to utilize. Sailors struggled to discover how and where to check in. 

Challenge 3: Communication with users

Even with established email marketing strategies, Virgin Voyages acknowledged the need for a more engaging and effective communication strategy to better connect with their audience.

And they found Storyly… 

Solution 1: Engaging with users in a more catchy way

Utilizing Storyly, Virgin Voyages added Stories on their website with the Energized layout, a dynamic way to display Web Stories to attract its key audience. Stories became the fun element they were looking for to promote their services and help customers engage with the brand in a way that felt true to Virgin.

Solution 2: Surfing on the website easily

The familiar and intuitive nature of Stories dramatically improved the user experience on Virgin Voyages’ website. With Storyly, users found navigating the website more convenient, enhancing user retention rates. Stories simplified the process of finding where to check in and how to take the following steps. With the integration of Storyly, time spent on the website has markedly increased.  

Solution 3: Interactive Marketing

With Storyly, the Virgin Voyages team had the opportunity to exploit the Story formats and its features. By embedding Stories into the website layout, they could put interactive stickers and call-to-actions (CTAs) on the website to guide their users. Interactive Stories created a more engaging and fun experience for the brand’s Sailors. In addition, by tapping into the power of using labels on Stories, Virgin Voyages can now reach out to Sailors in a more targeted and effective way.

Results:

Storyly has elevated Story engagement to 24% and increased the average watch length to 180 seconds, proving that Stories are incredibly effective in keeping users on the Virgin Voyages website. 

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