Planet Argon: Latest News

Contiki Community updates

Robby Russell — 2012-01-26

We recently launched some rather big updates to Contiki’s online community.

2011: Year in Review

Robby Russell — 2012-01-01

2012 is here. Let’s take a look back at our last year.

McMenamins hires Planet Argon

Robby Russell — 2011-12-10

We recently were awarded a contract with McMenamins, a chain of nearly sixty brewpubs, microbreweries, music venues, historic hotels, and theater pubs located in the Pacific Northwest. We look forward to sharing what our teams have up our sleeves.

Contiki Personalized eBrochures

Ryan Gensel — 2011-07-06

Contiki is the worldwide leader in tours for 18-35’s and operates in over 40 countries around the world. For more than fifty years, Contiki has primarily relied on print brochures to allure and entice young adults to explore the globe. The printed tour brochures provide detailed and photographic overviews of the many available tours and benefits of going Contiki, however they do not provide the same flexibility and accessibility of an always up-to-date website.

Planet Argon was asked to help develop an eBrochure feature that empowered an interested traveler to create their own custom brochure, save it as a PDF, print it, or share it with friends via email, Facebook, and Twitter. For example, a soon to graduate student could build up a list of their dream tours print it out and leave it out for one of their parents to discover as a graduation gift hint. Sometimes a potential customer already has a solid idea of which tours they’re interested in, or may have a friend that needs an extra push to get them to commit to travel plans. Now, users can add tours to their personalized eBrochure as they wander around the Contiki site whether they have an account or not.

eBrochures are always saved for the user on the website, so you can continue to customize it as long as you’d like before making your own copy. When you’re ready, there’s a complete brochure full of photographs, highlights, detailed itineraries, frequently asked questions, and other information to help you feel confident in choosing the perfect tour for you.

Travel agents also benefit from this feature by creating a personalized eBrochure for their customers. The custom brochure is complete with a personalized message and free space for the travel agent’s business logo.

Contiki goes to South America

Ryan Gensel — 2011-06-23

Contiki now travels to South America!

Contiki asked Planet Argon to help introduce their new South America tours. This release was a big moment for Contiki, and they promoted it with a mysterious site countdown on their front page. Our team of designers worked closely with Contiki to deliver fresh and inspiring interaction to match up to the global anticipation for this new continent to tour.

We designed a guided navigation to give users the freedom to explore the region’s details and beautiful photography. The pages are in numerical order, however users can explore in any order they desire. Each page aims to answer questions about South America, such as the benefits of traveling with Contiki, the culture of the region, and suggestions for what to do with free time on tour.

Page copy was kept light and eye-catching. We highlighted the many reasons why you should choose Contiki to take you to South America without getting too in-depth and overwhelming the user. Contiki provided great photos, and it was an easy decision to proudly display them on every page. Users can click on any photo to enlarge it and get a better view of South America without being taken away from the page they’re currently on. A call-out for asking questions to Contiki was included in the top right of every page so any specific questions could be answered.

The View Our Tours page at the end of the guided navigation lets the user make a decision on where they’d like to go. There is a link to a full brochure for download, and a FAQ is provided in case the user has more questions about their upcoming tour.

We also created a companion “campaign landing page” with quick bursts of information, photography, and a promotional spot for “Pin Me If You Can,” a game where Contiki users could win a free trip to South America by guessing the locations shown in travel videos.

Robby talks Oh-My-Zsh and Planet Argon at The Changelog

Ryan — 2011-05-26

Check out this podcast from The Changelog where you can listen to Robby Russell share the story of oh-my-zsh. Learn more about the popular open source project as well as his thoughts on Open Source and Planet Argon.

The Changelog is “a weekly podcast and blog that covers what’s fresh and new in Open Source.”

Contiki Refresh 2010

Ryan Gensel — 2010-11-15

We recently helped Contiki refresh their growing site to coincide with the release of next years’ brochures.

The project included fresh designs for the site’s homepage, page layout, social media integration, and the creation of Regional About pages that provide a summary of the region’s most exciting attractions.

The homepage got a complete overhaul. In addition to the new design, we integrated a tour finder that offers immediate access to advanced search options. We added a new, moving carousel of promotional slides that are constantly updated to inform travelers of the most current deals and we created the Genius, a guided form which asks natural language questions to determine the most appropriate tour for the traveler that needs a little inspiration (or a little variety).

The site’s layout has also been updated to reflect the marketing of next years’ brochures. Facebook and Twitter ‘Liking’ are now seamlessly integrated with tour pages, so travelers can share their preferences or upcoming tours with friends and family.

Checkout the new design and features, we think you’ll like them.

AlphaClone optimizes subscription service

Ryan Gensel — 2010-11-10

We recently helped AlphaClone optimize their subscription program and introduced the ability to purchase fund groups a la carte. These changes lower the barriers of entry for a potential investor, who want to get comfortable with AlphaClone’s portfolio without the commitment to a full membership. The enhanced guest pass and reduced membership fees allow individual investors to spend time learning and researching. We modified their existing subscription system to manage one-time payments and created an interface for purchasing fund groups a la carte, while updating the rest of their site to reflect the new features.

Sign-up and start cloning today!

Introducing RailsDeveloper

Ryan — 2010-09-01

Over the past several months we’ve been building a site for the Ruby on Rails community. While we agree that Rails has great documentation and a community of passionate developers, we haven’t seen a good place for people to really share things with one another in a consistent and organized manner. Our own team struggled with this for years, having to come up with clever RSS feed tricks to share items with one another from our various bookmarking and sharing tools. Things would get lost, we’d not have any way of remembering which (rubygem|plugin|3rd party service) we thought was better than another or which solution we should look at again the next time we faced a similar problem.

RailsDeveloper aims to become the leader in knowledge about the demographics, growth, interests, and best practices of the Rails community. We want to connect people with the community so that they don’t feel so isolated. Many developers work in a vacuum and rely on online resources for growing their skill-set. We sought to give Rails developers a place to ask for help, and inviting enough to help others. We want to do our part in making it intuitive and exciting to share useful resources with the rest of the community. RailsDeveloper is our platform for developers like ourselves to collect, share, and recommend resources to one another.

Interactive Maps launched for Contiki

Allison Beckwith — 2010-06-25

We recently helped Contiki introduce Interactive Maps to all 180+ tour pages. The new feature enables visitors to move through the daily itinerary while also visualizing each day’s route and visited attractions on the map, viewing a photo slideshow with pictures that relate to the locations on the map, and finding more resources for further exploration.

We invite you to explore this new functionality, which is now available on all of Contiki’s tours. (view one)