San Francisco Airport

Client overview
Founded in 1927, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is a dedicated organization serving the community of San Francisco, as well as the millions of travelers who pass through its doors each year. SFO strives to be safe and secure in all of its practices, including delivering a quality guest experience while being on the cutting edge of airport environmental and social sustainability initiatives. This is all accomplished while operating a successful and efficient business.
The Challenge
SFO’s previous site was outdated, cumbersome to navigate, and was built on an older version of Drupal that did not allow for more modern functionality. It was hard to update and created issues for the SFO team when new information needed to be presented. They wanted to modernize the site, making it more engaging, flexible, and easier to update. The new site also had to support their business goals, and bring more awareness to their vendors and activities at the airport.




The Process
Strategy Work
Kanopi worked with several departments of the SFO team in a collaborative way to create an updated website solution that housed all of their important information and technologically supported all of the functions and features of their customer experience.

Site Redesign
Kanopi leveraged its robust creative and development teams to create three unique homepage designs. The goal was to provide a diverse, technically-sound, visual approach for the SFO team that would help them align internally on an overall look.

The Solution
Kanopi met with seven different stakeholder groups and parsed through guest complaints to define the goals and pain points. Those final goals were:
- To design an intuitive navigation
- To provide a flexible design that allows admins the ability to create unique layouts based on the content.
- Integrate revenue-generating content within the natural flow of a guest’s experience.
- Better concession/amenity browsing.
- Weaving in the Bay Area’s feel.
- To redesign alerts to not be intrusive yet available on any page, even after that page was closed.
- To show more color and diversity across the food, art, and even the employees.
- To put a human face on SFO.
In order to prioritize these goals while leveraging the latest Drupal has to offer, Kanopi created flexible layouts that allow content admins to promote important initiatives throughout the site with little-to-no developer support needed. This was done through a simplified Drupal admin interface that eliminated much of the overhead encountered on the previous site. We also created opportunities for users to become more engaged with the site via personalized dashboards that allow them to find content that is relevant to their travel plans, which helps improve their overall experience at SFO.
Key Features

User Dashboard
A customized user dashboard was created that personalizes both flight information and the pre-flight experience for each traveler.

Overall User Experience
Site navigation is easier to use and site design is more modern. Information is easier to find and tailored to SFO users.

Client Dashboard
With an eye on usability, Kanopi ensured the admin experience was as easy to use as possible. Fields were organized to optimize a content editor’s workflow as they make updates to the site.
The Result
SFO now has an easier-to-use website that allows for quicker, more efficient updating. Visitors can enjoy a more responsive layout, modern navigation and an increased overall user experience. Vendors are more prominent with new “profiles” offering more detailed information on their offerings and locations within the airport. “Things to do” are more visible as well, lending to travelers having a more robust site experience.