flyadeal receives award for revamped website at the Middle East Technology Excellence Awards

The company was also recognised for its viral campaign.

During its brand refresh activity, flyadeal was brainstorming on the best technology platforms for the mobile app. Most of the airlines are prone to have native apps which are large in size and have lengthy development lead times.

Hence, flyadeal chose to lead the industry with a progressive web app that is easy to enhance with a quick go-to-market turnaround.

flyadeal is Saudi’s newest and only digital airline. It receives over 90% of its sales directly from its website and mobile app. Due to enormous traffic volumes and demand for low fares, flyadeal has been improving its e-commerce infrastructure since 2017.

It moved away from on-demand servers and switched to auto-scaling servers across multiple zones to cater to audiences from different geographies.

In 2020, flyadeal’s website was redesigned with a refreshed brand and UX elements for enhanced customer experience and retention.

Usage of CDN, WAF, and bot protection technologies enables flyadeal’s web and mobile to be one of the most secure airline websites in the world.

Since the website’s launch in September 2017, flyadeal has more than 11 million passengers who have booked and travelled through the flyadeal website.

The company also has the Insider Growth Management Platform which helps improve its performance in digital marketing. It provides a superior user experience on the website and mobile app using AI technology and predictive algorithms to drive conversions.

For its efforts, flyadeal won the “E-Commerce - Airline” award in the recently concluded Middle East Technology Excellence Awards hosted by The Asian Business Review.

The awards programme recognises successful groundbreaking projects, digital services, reimagined strategies, and technological initiatives in the Middle East to honour the technology champions of the region.

A significant part of driving traffic to flyadeal’s website are groundbreaking campaigns. flyadeal’s "Cargo Class Campaign” became a huge success. To position flyadeal's brand and create mass awareness, the company set out a “prank”. It told everyone that they could fly for the lowest fares possible, but only under extreme conditions. The reveal: you don’t have to go that far to fly for less!

The company called this the Cargo Passenger Class: a new breakthrough in aviation that allows travel in the cargo hold for the lowest fares.

The campaign went viral and brought a massive awareness spike. Visits to the website increased eightfold.  It became the most searched topic in Saudi Arabia, above results of a Manchester and Liverpool game, and trended number one on Twitter.  Consumers played along creating their memes and registering to fly in Cargo Class on the campaign website. The interest spanned across the globe with 245 news outlets and blogs talking about the prank.  

The progressive web app combined with innovative marketing is some of the core elements of flyadeal becoming the fastest-growing airline in the region.  The company expects the growth momentum to continue into 2022 and beyond.