We’re thrilled to share the news that our new look karryon.com.au is now live. If you’re reading this – welcome! You’re one of the first to see it, and we hope you like it as much as we do.
Six months in the making, our in-house creative agency (New Beach) has built the site entirely from scratch – taking all of our favourite elements from the old site and adding a whole load of sassy new tech and features to make it even better.
We’ve always been revered for our ideas and innovation – so here we are, hitting go and celebrating something positive for the travel industry.
We certainly weren’t going to let the c-word stop us from launching it!
So what’s good about it? And why should you care anyway? Here are 8 features to help explain it a bit more (because you know we love a good listicle at Karryon).
1. It’s got a slick new look and feel
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder naturally, but we think you’ll like the new design and the overall balance of the site.
The design is purposely clean, fresh and easy on the eye with plenty of black and white space to showcase all of the gorgeous travel imagery.
We’ve also introduced a new contemporary and very easy to read font, to make digesting our content a breeze no matter which device you’re on.
2. It’s all about your smartphone
Because around 60% of you read karryon.com.au on your smartphones, we’ve built the site mobile-first, which means it looks gorgeous on any sized screen and enables you to quickly access and digest the content, wherever in the world you may be.
All of our industry-leading Social media channels, our eDM and our new Together In Travel closed Facebook Group flow in beautifully for a seamless experience.
By the way – have you joined our Together In Travel closed Facebook Group yet? It may have the unfortunate (and unplanned) acronym ‘TIT’ but don’t let that stop you!
What you will find in the group is 4,000 (and growing fast) of your fellow industry peers from every sector of the travel industry, sharing great ideas and supporting one another through these difficult times.
3. It’s super fast
A turbocharged site means less boring page loads and more time getting inspired about travel and the news and trends you need to know.
You also don’t need to leave a story when you reach the end of one, because as if by magic, you’ll get recommend another to read. Clever eh?
4. It’s easy to read, find and share stuff
Ever tried to read a PDF or share any content from it on a smartphone? Enough said.
Our navigation is super easy, and our intuitive search function means you can always find whatever you’re looking for, quickly.
You can also easily share all of your favourite stories across your own social media channels to promote yourself or your business.
5. It’s got a whole new destination section
Now, this is exciting. Our new Karryon Destinations section is our new travel industry home for the best places to go in the world – be it countries, states, regions or cities.
With a visual combination of everything you need to know for each destination plus the latest inspiration, news, stories and travel deals, this area will build to be your dynamic go-to home for the latest destination updates.
6. We want to connect travellers with the trade
One thing we’ve absolutely loved in our 7-year Karryon journey is that we have become a hybrid publication, community and brand – that is, one who both trade and consumers enjoy reading and engaging with as something useful and inspiring.
Lots of travel agents see us a marketing tool and share out our partner content and deals via social media with their clients to help them grow their own businesses and client bases.
We want to continue to build on this sentiment and create more tools for you to help you connect with clients and the industry and sell more travel when these crazy times are all over.
7. It’s still 100% free!
Our two titles – Karryon.com.au and www.traveltochangetheworld.com have always been completely free to read and will remain so.
We are an independent small business that relies solely on advertising and creative work with our awesome travel partners to fund our existence.
We’ve designed the new karryon.com.au site to create a balance between advertising and the content itself to ensure that the experience is an integrated and pleasant one for our number one priority – you! The reader.
8. There’s so much more to come
Despite these challenging days, we’re still really excited here at Karryon. Yes, of course, this is an extremely tough time for everyone, and we have not been spared either, having lost the majority of our partner advertising revenue in recent weeks for obvious reasons.
But, we love and believe in this industry 3000% and know the good times will return soon.
So, in the meantime, we want to take the innovative and leadership role for the industry we’ve become renowned for and keep bringing everyone together in travel (it’s already become our new mantra).
We have a number of other exciting initiatives to add to the site which will go live in the coming weeks. All of them will only enhance the site further and build on our position as the #1 travel industry site in Australia.
Oh, and shhh, don’t tell anyone but we’ll also be launching in New Zealand very soon too.
So what do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts and what we can do to make it even better for you. Please email us at editor@karryon.com.au – we’d love to hear from you.
If you want to drop me a line personally, I’m all ears too. Email me anytime at matt@karryon.com.au
All that remains to say is on behalf of all of the team at Karryon – THANK YOU for your continued loyalty, support and readership.
We simply couldn’t exist without you, and we’re truly grateful for your support, now more than ever.