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Reaching the Horizon: a new site on the WebDarren Minns' Southern Horizon Travel Company is finally on the Web. Southern Horizon, the victor in The Age's win-a-website contest, has taken delivery of its Web-connected NEC Pentium just in time to see the appearance of its own site - http://www.southernhorizon.com.au. It hasn't yet been listed with the Web's major search engines; indeed, hardly anyone yet knows about it. And perhaps that's just as well. As Darren Minns notes, the site is still being fine-tuned, with everything from link-checking to the mundane business of proof-reading text. "Once you see the whole thing together, you think, 'that's great, but we have left this out'", he says. He wants to provide a diary of events, and examples of particular sports on his sports tours page. The Shockwave rafting game needs further refinement. Now he plans a final get-together with the sites' designers, the Web design firm Reality Mechanics. At Reality Mechanics, Rob Raulings has a string of ideas and minor improvements he'd like to try, especially for the Shockwave rafting game. Though these compact games are an intriguing novelty on the Web, they need a lot of work if they are to prove a hit in a market saturated with sophisticated CD games. And the prize site's nominal $7500 budget was long ago exceeded. But the basics are there - especially the page which allows site visitors to fill in a form. The form responses find their way to Southern Horizon as e-mail after being processesd by a "GI program" at Southern Horizon's Web site hosting service, Mira Networking. It's this page more than any other which will tell Southern Horizon whether its site has been successful. Built for the long termThe site will change, of course. The Web-enabled Microsoft Office 97 software on Southern Horizon's new computer will allow the company to make small changes. For more extensive alterations, says Raulings, Southern Horizon may need a copy of Microsoft's FrontPage97 or some similar no-code Web-publishing program. An area for "trade enquiries" from travel agents and the like currently contains little information; it will be developed later. Reality Mechanics has intentionally built the site to make gradual expansion easy. Nevertheless, the site has already given this Australian travel company a new way to show itself to the rest of the world. "The site will definitely go towards our target audience," says Darren Minns. Thanks to Reality Mechanics' shrewd use of the firm's custom artwork, originally created by Darren's wife Liza, the site has a distinctive look far more memorable than many sites which have had far more money spent on them. Reality Mechanics' Mark Hill has built on the relaxed Australian holiday theme of the site by transforming photographs of the firm's events into "polaroids" scattered through the site - a last-minute idea which has lifted the site further above the ordinary. One more marketing toolNow that it has its site up, Southern Horizon aims to integrate it into the rest of its marketing. The normal pressures of business will slow that process down: Southern Horizon is heading for the peak of its tour season. But Darren and business partner Graeme Stevens plan to use the site to educate overseas tour agents in the services they offer. "We have been holding off contacting people so we would have something they could look at from anywhere in the world," says Darren. "The site shows we are a professional business that has these resources." In a couple of months' time, Southern Horizon new brochures will feature the Web address. Indeed, he's already beginning to think about how the current 12-page site might evolve with his business. With its marketing very much pitched at the US summer camp audience, Southern Horizon now faces three frenzied, logistically daunting months each year. Much more expansion, and as Darren acknowledges, the business will need to look for adult customers to fill the months outside the US summer. That, he muses, may require a separate site with a different look and feel. Darren is also beginning to form his own opinions about commercial Web sites. His verdict on the much-acclaimed Village Cinemas Web site? "Very fancy, but hard to get around. The Hoyts site was much simpler, but very direct ... you just click ... and get what you want. To get to see a picture at the Village site at Crown - well, pick a picture and see how hard it is to find at Village and Hoyts." Darren Minns is not just on the Web. In more ways than one, he's making it his business to understand it. Footnote: Two other organisations, Maresa Pty Ltd and the Australian Ballet, also won sites in The Age's competition. Maresa's site at www.breathalon.com.au describes its waterproof Breathalon fabric. According to Rob Raulings, the Australian Ballet site has fallen temporary victim to a data problem at the company which processes Australian web addresses - "domain names" - but will be on the Web soon.
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Visit the Southern Horizon site